The Voices Israel Group of Poets

in English

To all our returning visitors: welcome to our new website!

We now have a top menu with sub-menus  (the little arrow beside a menu item tells you whether it has a sub-menu or not). Note that the top menu items are also clickable – e.g. you can click on About Voices as well as on the items in its sub-menu.

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 160 poets in Israel and many other countries.  We are a fully-accredited and approved organization registered since 1993 with the Israel Organizations Authority.  


For fuller information: 

What We're Doing

Most of our groups are holding meetings this month but a few are not, because of the Passover holiday break -  details are in the Newsletter sent to all our members. Would-be members who'd like to visit a meeting: please see our Contacts page to get in touch with your local group coordinator. 


The prize-giving event of the 2018 Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition will be held on May 16th at 6 pm. Full details will be in our May newsletter. Meanwhile we can promise you the pleasure of listening to a number of Israeli poets as well as proxy readings of the poems by the 13 prize winners and honourable mentions. The winning poet, UK poet John Gallas, is doing his best to attend. And we’ll have the honour of welcoming two Californian poetry professors, who will be joining us to present prizes and will later give readings of their own poetry. So mark the date in your calendar!


The evening will also see the launch of a Voices Israel youth poetry prize endowed in memory of a young Israeli poet, Bar Sagi. We’re delighted that Voices Israel is going to help encourage the voices of the young in Israel.


Dr. Judy Belsky, the co-ordinator of our Bet Shemesh group,  helped organize a pre-Purim poetry reading entitled "The Spirit of Purim: Poetry and Music" at the Israel Center in Jerusalem. Five of our poets read their poems. To see a YouTube video of the event (1 hour 23 minutes) click here. 


Submissions to the 2019 Voices Israel anthology closed at the end of March. Now it's up to our Chief Editor Dina Yehuda and the editorial team of Wendy Dickstein, Phella Hirschson and Amiel Schotz, to make the hard decisions about which poems will feature in the 2019 Voices Israel Anthology. All those who have participated will be contacted by the Chief Editor later in the summer.


Our Annual General Meeting was held on Tuesday March 12th at 6 pm. Here's the agenda. It was a lively event with considerable discussion of resolutions.  It was graciously hosted once again in central Tel Aviv by Birgit Talmon who  organized a very appetising range of refreshments, and was attended by about 20 members.  Ruth Fogelman was presented with a Steimatsky voucher to mark her completion of ten years as the Jerusalem chapter's coordinator. (Avril Meallem has succeeded Ruth - Welcome Avril!) After the formal business of the evening there was an Open Mike session - the attendees each read two of their poems and enjoyed the experience of listening to each other's work.


The judges of the Reuben Rose Competition recently announced the winners. The three winners will receive cash prizes totalling $700 and publication of the winning poems. Ten poems have been awarded Honorable Mentions, with publication of the poems. Here's the list of winners and Honorable Mentions; we'll have the texts of the poems up on that page as soon as we can - watch this space!


Voices and IAWE held a joint Poetry Reading in Tzfat — on January 24, at Mystic Mountain Studio and Brewery in the Artists' Quarter of Tzfat - see it on Google Maps. Featured poets: Reuven Goldfarb, Shlomo Sher, Michael Dickel (Dekel); invitees: Yehudit Goldfarb, Ann Bar-Dov, Pesach Rotem, and Michael Kagan. After the poetry readings the venue was opened to the public and a Hassidic-looking band played blues and jazz. For fuller information and a few photos to convey the atmosphere, see our Tzfat Poetry Event page.

Thanks to Reuven Goldfarb for organizing this event! 

Do remember to renew your membership for 2019. The Early Bird discount has ended and the price is now 120 NIS for the year. To renew, just fill in our membership form and sending it by mail with a cheque, or by email with details of your bank transfer, to our Treasurer. Full details, and the form to fill in, are on our Join Voices page.

We recently held a workshop: "Imagery, Imagination and Poems that Build to a Series." Led by Dr. Judy Belsky -  poet extraordinaire and an amazing teacher of poetry writing - the workshop took place on December 17th in Jerusalem. The chapbook from this workshop, entitled "Mosaics of Memories," has now been published and is available for downloading here, and from the workshop page which gives more details about it and about how to order a print copy of the chapbook. 

Wondering what our workshops are like? Take a look at the Workshops section of our website.

What our Members Have Been Doing: congratulations to:

Ruth Fogelman for so ably organizing the Jerusalem group each month for ten years! Thank you!


Avril Meallem who will take over in May as coordinator of the Jerusalem group meetings. Thank you, Avril!


Esther Schnur-Berlot - for gaining 3rd Honourable Mention ($75.00 prize) in Poetica Publishing Company's 2018 ADRP Award, for her poem Arguing with the Deceased, and 4th Honourable Mention (also $75.00), for Everything is Broken.


Helen Bar-Lev - currently a Finalist in the ADRP Award, for her poem Who Knows?


Yocheved Zemel whose entire poem, Desert and Rebirth, will be published on the Deronda Review  homepage. (It was too long for the print edition.) Her poem Reaching for the Heavens will be published in the print edition. In addition, four of Yocheved’s poems will be published in IAWE's arc26 2019 edition: The Attic, Freedom, Flight, and Love in a War Zone. 


The following poets – (in alphabetical order) : Hayim Abramson, Ada Aharoni, Ann Bar-Dov, Helen Bar-Lev, Dr. Judy Belsky, Chaim Bezalel, Lilian Cohen, Wendy Dickstein, Ira Director, Bob Findysz, Ricky Rapoport Friesem, Reuven Goldfarb, Miriam Green, Britta Kollberg, Mark L. Levinson, Celia Merlin, Helen Schary Motro, Pesach Rotem, Shlomo Sher, Johnmichael Simon, Yocheved Zemel, whose works were chosen by Editor Dr. Shawn Edrei for IAWE’s arc26. The launch is on April 4, 2019, 18:30-21:30, at the Mazeh 9 Center, Tel Aviv.


Lidia Chiarelli of our Affiliate, Immagine & Poesia, whose book Sunset in Cup won First Prize at Premio Letterario Internazionale “Cinque Terre – Golfo dei Poeti" PORTOVENERE. Lidia will go to Portovenere on April 7 for the prize ceremony.


Matthew Anish who had two poems published in the recent anthology "Leisure" - which publishes poems of the Green Pavilion reading taking place the last Wednesday of each month.


Esther Cameron whose poem, In the Inner Court: A Purim Monodrama was published in Sasson Magazine. 

Rumi Morkin (aka Miriam Webber) whose poem "Smartphones" was published in Sasson Magazine, October 2018 (see https://sassonmag.com/smartphonesby-rumi-morkin/); and whose poem "Utopia" has been accepted for publishing in the Deronda Review of 2019.


Judy Koren whose poem "Utopias" has been accepted for publishing in the Deronda Review of 2019.


Ruth Fogelman who has had two poems published in the February issue of The Seventh Quarry.


Matthew Anish whose poem was published in the December/January issue of The Amulet. Matthew also has a chapbook, “Golden Words,” available for purchase at $7.00. You may reach him at greatceasersghost1@gmail.com.

Pesach Rotem, whose poem “Doom” was published in Tuck Magazine


Britta Kollberg (Germany), Julie Bloch Mendelsohn (Israel), Channah Moshe (Israel),

Shlomo (Steven) Sher (Israel), Immanuel Suttner (Australia), whose poems were published in the 2018 Mizmor Poetry Anthology from Poetica Publishing.


Edit Gavrielly, on the birth of two grandsons.


Eli Ben-Joseph, on the birth of a grandchild.
Helen Bar-Lev, on her appointment as Overseas Connections Coordinator for Voices Israel.

Hannah Moshe, who has had the following poems and works published:

  • "Ai Way Way" (a poem in English) and חודש סליחות (a poem in Hebrew with an English translation) in
          Amaravati Poetic Prism 2018, the international multilingual poetry anthology 2018.
  • "Autumn" in Mizmor Anthology eCollection, December 2018.
  • "May Every Step" and "Taking Time" in an extremely beautiful anthology called Family Celebrations
         2018    .


Avril Meallem, whose poetry books, Dancing with the Wind and Come Sit with Me by the River, together with her two collections of Tapestry Poetry (co-authored with Indian poetess Shernaz Wadia) have now been published on Amazon (worldwide) and are available as both paperback and Kindle e-book editions. The paperback versions are still available in Israel via https://tapestrypoetry.webs.com/ or https://avrilm.webs.com/


Pesach Rotem, whose poem “Ripple” was published in Nine Mile Magazine (http://ninemile.org); whose poem “Drawing Hands: Part One” was published in Constellations (www.constellations-lit.com/issues/vol8.html); and whose poem "Comforting Pats" was published a month or two earlier, in The Poeming Pigeon: In the News .


Channah Moshe, Hayim Abramson and Avril Meallem for having their poems published in the “Amaravati Poetic Prism 2018” – an International Multilingual Poetry Anthology.

Awards and Publications: Congratulations to:
Matthew Anish, USA, who had two poems published in the November issue of Beyond Bree, a Mensa publication, and before that, two poems published in the July-August issue of The Amulet.
Esther Cameron, on the publication of the third and final installment of her article "Put Down That Smartphone and Listen" in  Sasson Magazine; and for being interviewed by Rivka Levy, founding editor of that magazine.
Seymour Mayne, whose book In Your Words: Translations from the Yiddish and the Hebrew (Ronald P. Frye & Co.) received a Canadian Jewish Literary Award for outstanding book in 2018.
Ricky Rapaport Friesem, who has won First Prize in the nonfiction category of the Tiferet Journal 2018 writing contest for her submission “What’s in a Name?”
David Silverman, whose short story “Elvis Helps Me Courting” was chosen as one of the 12 winning stories in the ESRA Magazine Short Story Competition 2018.
Bernard Mann, for the interview with him in ESRA magazine's Sept/Oct/Nov 2018 issue about the writing of his book David & Avshalom, Life and Death in the Forest of Angels.

Come Join Us!

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

  • To attend a local meeting to try us out - contact your local Coordinator.
  • To become a member of Voices Israel - fill in our membership application form and send it in - full details are in the form. Note that we charge a
          modest annual membership fee, which covers our costs and entitles you to a free copy of the Anthology and reduced fees for workshops.