[2] His lyric poetry combines religious and folk tradition, modernist American literary practice, and Canadian landscape and atmosphere.

[3] J. I. Segal was born Yaakov Yitzchak Skolar in 1896 in Slobkovitz, Podolia in the Russian Empire (now Solobkovtsy, Ukraine),[4] the second youngest of seven children.

[7] In 1918 he published his first collection of poetry, Fun Mayn Velt ("From My World"), which brought him immediate recognition, not only in Canada but in New York City and Poland.

[3] In 1923, Segal and his family relocated to New York, where he joined Di Yunge poet Mani Leib's shoemaker collective.

[2] After publishing two collections of poetry, Segal returned to Montreal in 1928 after the death of his young daughter, Tsharna, whom he often addresses in later poems.