Jackson "Jax" Neal

About Jackson

Jackson "Jax" Neal is a poet, dancer, and performance artist from Houston, Texas currently based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Neal uses movement and language as technologies of intimacy, which he engages in various mediums including but not limited to: poetry, essay, dance, physical theatre, performance art, and endurance tests. He believes that literature and embodied movement demand a profound honesty and commitment which move the artist and the audience toward their own goodness.

Neal is a former National Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador to the Southwestern United States, selected by the Library of Congress and Urban Word NYC. His debut chapbook, Dear Azula, I Have a Crush on Danny Phantom, co-authored with Azura Tyabji, was published by Button Poetry in 2021.

Neal has trained in contemporary dance and physical theatre techniques across the United States and Germany. His dance, performance art, and poetry have been performed on stages such as the Dock 11 Theater, Tanzfabrik UferStudios, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, the National YoungArts Foundation, the Library of Congress, and the Overture Center for the Arts.

Neal is a former First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, the only full-tuition scholarship for hip-hop and spoken word artists in the world.

I believe that language is an embodied process which comes out of the lived material of our lives. I encourage my students not only to make as artists, but to think, and move, and live as artists.