Helen
Bar-Lev, IL
Voices
Israel members met in Tel-Aviv for the Annual General
Meeting
On 30 March
Voices Israel members met in Tel-Aviv for the Annual General
Meeting. Wendy Blumfield was elected President, Helen
Bar-Lev was elected Secretary, Chanita Millman continues as
treasurer and Ezra Ben-Meir continues as Poetry Page editor.
Johnmichael Simon continues as webmaster of the Voices site:
http://freewebs.com/voicesisrael/
Voices
Israel Group of Poets in Israel Spring workshop, 5 May
2011–05–06
The attendees of 5.5 workshop,
minus Wendy Blumfield who took the photo
With a break for
a pot-luck lunch in the garden, 15 poets spent the day in
Haifa working on five very diverse issues that affect their
poetry genre and style.
Ada Aharoni who was a refugee from Egypt and is an activist
in the Peace Movement presented the work of Wilfred Owen,
the First World War soldier poet who wrote prolifically
against war until he was killed in action at age 25. Dina
Yehuda who lives in a religiou s v illage in the Galilee
discussed Midrash as Muse: the story of Ruth and Boaz.
Ruth Fogelman who lives in the Old City of Jerusalem
distributed poems by two African-American women poets, Maya
Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks, and the themes of freedom and
feminism in their work.
In the afternoon, Lilian Cohen, an English teacher who
worked for many years at the Leo Baeck High School in Haifa,
read her poems that had been influenced by climate,
geography and culture of location. Lilian is originally from
Australia and now spends long periods of time in both
countries. Finally, Eli Ben-Joseph, who teaches poetry and
English literature in the Western Galilee College, presented
the challenge of Prosody and set exercises using stressed
and unstressed syllables and common meters.
An eclectic collection of poems were produced in the short
time allotted for the writing exercises and these will
appear in due course on the Voices web-site.
This is the poem Susan Rosenberg wrote in response to Lilian
Cohen’s presentation:
Susan
Rosenberg, IL
From The U.S.A. to
Israel
I've
been here so long
I've almost forgotten
the smell of snow
the colors of fall leaves
the sight of tidy lawns
the scent of their
newly mowed grass
heated or air-conditioned cocoons
cushions between us and reality
Once called upon to remember
it is all vividly returned
and were I there
would I be aware
of the pieces of here
that I most love?
I try to speak of it
but can't
like a young girl in love
I'm stammering
and inarticulate.
Helen
Read Helen Bar-Lev's Contributing Editor column:
Interview and Poems of Ada Aharoni, IL.
Helen Bar-Lev , artist, poet
www.helenbarlev.com
Senior Editor,
Cyclamens and Swords Publishing
www.cyclamensandswords.com
Secretary,
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English
http://www.freewebs.com/voicesisrael/
Contributing editor,
SKETCHBOOK, A Journal for Eastern and Western Short
Forms
http://poetrywriting.org/
International Senior Poet Laureate, 2009
Amy Kitchener Foundation
