I am writing this letter as an introduction to Jacquie Buncel. I have known Jacquie for eight years. We met when she became Executive Director of the Sunshine Centres for Seniors at St. Andrew’s United Church, where I served as a minister for twenty-one years. She is highly respected as a caring and effective community leader.

Jacquie’s poetry has been published in a number of journals. Her poetry and short fiction have also appeared in several anthologies. Recently, her first book of poems, Turning the Corner at Dusk, was published.

The book takes us on a journey with her and her Dad as they return to the home he once knew as a boy during the years of the Holocaust, in Presov, Slovakia. It is a moving portrayal of the emotions associated with that return for one who lived there. It is time for “the unveiling”. The few survivors gather in a kind of reunion that transfixes the reader. It is an experience seen through the eyes of his daughter, Jacquie, who reflects on her father’s many years of silence and then pieces together her own sense of that past during this trip of unveiling. She takes us with her on her journey through the then and the now of her family’s holocaust survivorship.

Other poems detail Jacquie’s own path of isolation, struggle, and emergence as the person who claims life for herself being Jewish and lesbian. Along with detailing realistic and pragmatic events such childbirth and everyday settings of home life, she shares with us her deep love for her partner and their children.
Her passion for life and the need to express that passion poetically create a life drama that is for the reader both insightful and emotionally engaging.

Jacquie offers her time and talent to groups who are interested in hearing her story and her reading of her poetry. She enjoys reading her poetry very much and she would be pleased to share her poetry with your congregation. If you would like to contact her, you can reach her at this email address: info@jacquiebuncel.ca.

I highly recommend Jacquie as a literary artist, poet, and speaker.

With kindest regards,
The Rev. Dr. John D. Hartley