“Jan writes beautifully about both pain and joy with detailed
descriptions that put you right in either the patient's or the
doctor's shoes with crystal clear empathy and compassion. Jan's
writing always has an emotional punch and descriptive angle that will
clarify the world around the reader. I highly recommend reading and
hearing her any chance you get.”
“Jan Steckel has been giving readings at venues in the East Bay and San Francisco. You'll know her by a certain glowing exuberance and by the fact that when she 'reads,' she presents memorized poems, and immediately breaks down the wall between stage and audience.”
“Writer, poet et al. Jan Steckel delivers her work with a rich, soft intensity that surrounds her audiences, and brings them closer to both the storyteller and the story.”
— Alison “Chokwadi” Fletcher, Co-Host of Poetry Diversified
“Jan's poetry is sharp and is often performed by memory — she'll tell you it takes great effort, but she is really good at it!.... One of the best poets around!”
— Mark States, host of Berkeley's Poetry Express and author of Reinvention (Mother's Hen Press) and Grip of the Past (CC. Marimbo Communications)
“The incomparable Jan Steckel ... is a bold, sexy,
knock-your-socks-off, take-no-prisoners performance poet, and she has
a new chapbook out called “Underwater Hospital.” I own a copy
and highly recommend it!”
— Selene Steese, Co-host of
the Oakland S.O.U.P. Reading Series and teacher of the "Writing from
Your Inner Wildness" workshops
“THE UNDERWATER HOSPITAL is uniformly strong and
compassionate....Her work is luminous, her reading
brilliant.”
— Widely published poet Kit Kennedy, host of
the All Poets Welcome Reading Series at the Gallery Cafe in San
Francisco
“Jan Steckel's poet persona witnesses all kinds of suffering, pain, sickness, and death. She is a physician, and she has been trained to alleviate these things. But she can't, and that is a nightmare. But she can pray. She can examine her conscience and her behavior. And she can make poems that may soften the hard hearts of the world. These poems feel like a human body speaking, telling its tales of woe. Is the body drowning in the Underwater Hospital? Or has the body finally found a place of comfort and healing? Submarine light / flooded the chamber / as we rose / and rose. I have a feeling that the body will rise, if Jan Steckel is the physician in charge.”