Voices Israel Group of Poets in English

Who We Are:

Voices Israel is the natural home for Israeli poets writing in English, and for those abroad who support our goals and share our enthusiasm for poetry. From our initial launch by four founders in 1971, we have grown to a membership of around 150 poets in Israel and several other countries. We are a fully-accredited and approved organization registered since 1993 with the Israel Organizations Authority.

For Fuller Information:

see our About Voices page;
Come visit our Facebook page!
download our flyer and email it to others who would like to hear about us.
We also have a short flyer for notice boards. If there’s a place where English speakers gather – why not print it out and pin it up there?

Come join us!

We’re always happy to welcome both new and established (yes and would-be) poets into our family!

To attend a local meeting to try us out – contact your local Coordinator. You’re welcome to ask to attend, as a guest, any of our local meetings, via Zoom or in-person, for two or at most three meetings prior to deciding whether to join.
To become a member of Voices Israel – fill in our membership application form and send it in! Full details are on our Membership page. Our modest annual membership dues cover our costs and entitle you to a free copy of the Anthology and reduced fees for workshops.

Some of our local groups hold face-to-face meetings, while others meet via Zoom. For members with no convenient local group, we also have a Global Group which includes members from both Israel and abroad: see the Our Team page for contact details of its coordinator.

Chapbooks currently available can be ordered via PayPal: click the link below, it will ask you to log in to your PayPal account and then to fill in the amount to send Voices Israel with a note saying what the payment is for. Please also send an email to whoever is distributing them (our chapbook producer, Judy Koren: koren.judy@gmail.com).

The link: PayPal.me/VoicesIsrael.

Voices Israel and the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023

We continue to mourn the loss of: our member Judih Weinstein Haggai (in whose honour we produced and distributed to members a memorial chapbook of her and other’s poems) and her husband Gadi Haggai, both murdered on their kibbutz, Nir Oz; the brother-in-law of the daughter of our member Edit Gavriely, murdered at the Nova Music Festival; and the granddaughter, Deborah and her husband, Shlomi, of our oldest member, Susan Rosenberg, murdered on their kibbutz.

Many of our members have relatives in the army or on reserve duty defending our nation. All of these other brave young men and women should be thanked, honored, and blessed. We pray for their safety.

What we’ve been doing of late

Below is the list of our activities for the last few months. To see the full list of what we’ve been doing, check out our Voices Israel’s Activities page

January to March 2025

Early Bird membership renewal has started: click here to renew or join at a reduced rate (until the end of March).

The submission period for our 2025 Anthology has opened and will remain open through March 15th, 2025. Submit your best three unpublished poems via our Submitting to the Anthology page.

We’ve fixed the date for the joint Reuben Rose / Bar Sagi competitions award event: it’ll be on April 27th at 7 pm Israel time, via Zoom.

October to December 2024

Judy Koren was appointed as the new Chief Editor of our Anthology as of November 1st. She was the only candidate for the position. The submission period for the Anthology opens, as usual, on December 15th. Full guidelines, and a button to submit (up to 3 poems) via Submittable, are on our Submitting to the Anthology page.

A new Editorial Board for the Anthology has been appointed for the next two-year term: apart from the Chief Editor its members are Deborah Golden, Elana Wolff and Avril Meallem. Many thanks to them all for accepting this commitment!

The submission period for the 2024 Reuben Rose competition has closed and results are expected to be announced by mid-December.

Due to the problems of travel when we are still suffering missile attacks, we postponed the planned October 30th workshop. Our member Eli Ben-Joseph, valiantly stepping in at the last moment, gave a Zoom mini-workshop on the poems of Emily Dickinson in its place, attended by 24 members. We’ll be producing an e-chapbook (PDF) of the poems resulting from it, as usual. Many thanks to Eli!

Our annual Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize competition opened on November 10th this year; the submission period ends on February 14th, 2025. Information is in the Bar Sagi Prize section of this website. Spread the word to all the middle- and high-school students you know!

What our members have been doing

Below is a list of our members’ latest poetic achievements, with links to their publications where available. To see the full list for the past six months, check out our Members’ Activities page.

January 2025: congratulations to:

Judith Robinson, the winner of this year’s Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.

Gary Corbi, David Silverman, Iris Dan, Naomi Yalin, Miriam Webber, Fran Levin and Pesach Rotem, who all merited honorable mentions in this year’s Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.

Isaac Cohen, for his many successes this last month.

Shulamit Bat Or who has had two poems published on The Deronda Review’s web page POEMS FOR ISRAEL, OCTOBER 2023 AND AFTER – you can read the poems here.

Pessy Krausz whose poem “Grandmother’s Gaza” was published in the ESRA Magazine, December 2024 on page 96.

Julian Alper whose poem “Laughing Dave” was published in the ESRA Magazine’s December 2024 on page 92.

Eli Ben-Joseph who has had a poem selected for publication in arc 31, the journal of the IAWE (Israel Association of Writers in English).

Judy Koren whose poem “Cindarina” has been published in the print journal Penstricken; an online version of the magazine is readable at https://penstricken.com/one/ (p.69).

Mara Lee Grayson whose work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize; and whose poem “Cross-Country Hydatidiform” has been published in The Pedestal Magazine.

December 2024: congratulations to:

Helen Bar-Lev, whose poem ‘Uprooted’ was published in the Somerville Times: read it here.

Shulamit Bat Or – whose poem ‘Behold You Are Already Returning’ has been published on ATUNIS GALAXY POETRY’s web site.

Donna Bechar, Shulamit Bat Or and Iris Dan, who have each had poems selected for publication in volume 31 of arc, the journal of the IAWE (Israel Association of Writers in English).

Isaac Cohen, for his many successes this last month.

Fran Levin, who has had two poems selected for publication in volume 31 of arc, the journal of the IAWE.

Ruth Schreiber, whose poem ‘New Normal’ is included in the October 2024 edition of the Jewish Literary Journal and may be read here.