The Voices Israel Group of Poets

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 many 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?  

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.

We are planning a gala event to mark the 50th anniversary of Voices Israel: on Sunday 11th July at 7.30 p.m. Israel time – on Zoom so that our members far and wide can participate. This is 5:30 pm UK time, 12:30 pm US East Coast time, 9:30 am Pacific time. We look forward to seeing you all there!  Again, to register contact Judy at  president@voicesisrael.com.

On June 7th we held our first post-Covid face to face activity with a one-day workshop in Netanya.  20 participants enjoyed three presentations and writing exercises in the lovely home of our past President, Susan Olsburgh. For details and photos see the workshop page on this website.

Face to face activity continues with another one-day workshop in Haifa on June 23rd. This one is fully subscribed so we have closed registration. 

Our Haifa Group  presented, by invitation, a special program of its members' poetry: "Hearing our Voice –the Pleasure of Poetry" at the April meeting of the Oren (Haifa) branch of Hadassah Women on April 13th. Eight members of the group read three poems each.

The joint Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize and Reuben Rose Competition awards event was held on Sunday May 2nd at 7:30 pm Israel time (that's 5:30 pm UK time, 12:30 noon US East Coast time and 9:30 am US Pacific time). You can read the full announcement of the event here (pdf file).  We have 66 people registered to attend.  If there's time, it will be followed by an Open Mic at which around a dozen of our members will read a poem each.

Our 2021 Annual General Meeting took place on Monday April 5th via Zoom. It was followed by a very enjoyable Open Mic poetry reading at which 15 of our members read a poem each.  More  details are in the official announcement here (pdf file).

Our Zoom workshop, "Harnessing the senses for creative inspiration," presented by Voices Israel member Elana Dorfman, took place on Monday March 8th at 7:30 pm Israel time (5:30 pm UK time, 12:30 noon US East Coast time). Once again it was fully attended and enthusiastically received. Full details and some screenshots of the event are on our  Zoom Workshop, March 2021 page.

We've announced the winners of the 2020 Reuben Rose competition: 

• First prize: “David’s Shield,” by Ricky Rapoport Friesem (Israel)
• Second prize: “Lantern Fish,” by Jane Seitel (USA)
• Third prize: “The Burden of Memory,” by Esther B. Lipton (UK)

We held our first "mini-workshop" - two one-hour presentation-plus-exercise sessions, via Zoom - on December  29th, on the subject of Metrical Poetry.  The 25 participants seemed to enjoy it, and there were no technical glitches. We look forward to publishing an e-chapbook of edited versions of the poems produced at the workshop. We have another workshop planned for early March, right after Purim - details TBA.

We held the joint awards event for the first Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize plus the 2019 Reuben Rose competition on October 27th, 2020, via Zoom.  Once again we had a great attendance with over 40  people zooming in to hear the young winners of the Bar Sagi prize, and the more seasoned winners of the Reuben Rose competition, read their winning poems. At the end of the event we held an Open Mike at which 14 of our members read their poems.  Further details of this lovely and much-appreciated event are on the competitions' respective pages:

• The Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize event: see the Bar Sagi Awards Event page.  The texts of the winning poems and one Honourable Mention poem  can be accessed and downloaded from that page or directly via this link (PDF file).

• The Reuben Rose competition event: see the  2019 Competition Prizegiving page; the texts of the poems can be accessed and downloaded from that page or directly via this link (PDF file). 

We held the 2020 Voices Israel Anthology launch event on September 22nd. Over 50 members attended from Israel and abroad, and 37 read their poems - our biggest event ever! We were delighted to welcome members zooming in from Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada. For a fuller account of this lovely event, and screenshots from our Zoom video of it, see the 2020 Anthology Launch page.

June 2021: another busy month for our members! Congratulations to:

Helen Bar-Lev, whose poem, Ah, Moses, has been published in Poetica Magazine at https://www.poeticamagazine.com/helen-bar-lev; and who has had two poems, Mourning Irises and A May Storm, published in the International Writers Journal, https://iwj-magazine.com/iwj/2021/01. In addition, – Helen’s poem, Suggestions to the Young Poet (which appeared in Voices’ March newsletter) was broadcast to youth groups on the WORLD POETRY CAFÉ RADIO SHOW on CFRO 100.5 FM, Vancouver, Canada.

Ricky Friesem, who is launching her new Hebrew collection, MIklat, published by Beit Eked in Israel, on June 21st at 7 pm, in the garden of her home at the Weizmann Institute. Ricky is inviting any Voices Israel member to attend: contact her at  friesem.friesem@weizmann.ac.il to be added to the mailing list for invitations.

Reuven Goldfarb, whose poem, “Cheering Gino Cimoli,” was a finalist in the Early Weaver Baseball Writing Prize competition, sponsored by The Cobalt Review, and appears there on-line. See www.cobaltreview.com.

Judy Koren whose poem "Tel Shikmona" is being published in the June issue of The Orchards Poetry Journal, and whose poem "Persimmon" has been accepted for the October issue of the biennial print-only literary magazine Blue Unicorn.

Pesach Rotem, whose poem “Bearing Witness” has been published in Topical Poetry at https://topicalpoetry.com/bearing-witness-an-open-letter-to-darnella-frazier.

Richard Shavei-Tzion, director of the Ramatayim Men’s Choir, on their Grand Finale Concert at the Jerusalem Theatre on 23.6.21, concluding 26 years of activity, over 250 performances across Israel and Europe, from London to St. Petersburg. Richard, we hope you will now have more time to write poetry!

All our members who contributed poems to the Deronda Review's special section about the Lag Ba’Omer tragedy onMount Meron:  Ruth Fogelman, Mindy Aber Barad Golembo, Hayim Abramson, Esther Cameron, Brenda Appelbaum Golani, Leah Leslie Gottesman, Shoshannah Somerville, Alana Schwartz and Gerson Moskowitz, Esther Fein, and Chananya Weissman. All their poems are online on the Deronda Review's website, here. May they help to ensure that this tragedy will never be forgotten.

May 2021: Our members have been especially busy!  Congratulations to:

Judy Koren, whose poem "The Plane Truth" was accepted for the June issue of Lighten Up Online. In addition, Judy’s poem "The X Factor" was accepted by The Road Not Taken, a Journal of Formal Poetry, for their August issue.

Hayim Abramson, Simcha Angel, Mindy Aber Barad, Judy Belsky, Esther Cameron, Ruth Fogelman, Judy Koren, Michael E. Stone, and Miriam Webber (a.k.a. Rumi Morkin) who have all had poems published in the Deronda Review, Vol. 9.1, 2021.

Rosemary Wolfson, who has recently had a poem accepted for the Palewell Press Anthology Can You Hear the People Sing? Global responses to the pandemic.

Mindy Aber Barad, Helen Bar-Lev, Wendy Dickstein, Judith Fineberg, and Larry Lefkowitz, who submitted poems read at the Jerusalism event "HaShoah thru Poetry" and published in Halah, The literary magazine of Jerusalism.

Judith Fineberg, whose poem "Better than Bandaids" was published in an online Dream Doctors newsletter.

Helen Bar-Lev, Judith R. Robinson, and Judy Koren, who each had a poem published in Poetry Super Highway’s 23rd Annual Yom HaShoah issue.

Rena Lopata, who has published a collection of poetry dating from 1979-2019 including photography by her husband, Alex; the Australian Jewish News published Rena’s poem "There is a crack in everything" in their Literary Pages during the High Holy Days.

Willa Schneberg, who presented a poetry reading on April 11, 2021, at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland, Oregon USA celebrating National Poetry Month in April.

Michael J. Duke, who has been published in the latest edition of Spotlight published by the Circle Foundation for the Arts.

April 2021: Congratulations to:

Paul Rabinowitz, who has some new published works: “The Monastery” in the Spring issue of The Adirondack Review; "Villa dei Misteri" in the Spring issue of The Courtship of Winds; and “The Cat” and "Soundscape" in the Authors and Artists Anthology.

Helen Bar-Lev, whose poem, "St. Patrick’s Day Cranes", and painting, "Cranes at the Agamon HaHula Nature Reserve", have been printed in the Dylan Day Celebration magazine.

Stanley H. Barkan for co-editing the anthology of Bilingual poetry, Bridging the Waters III.  And to  Stanley, Willa Schneberg, Steven (Shlomo) Sher, Ada Aharoni, Helen Bar Lev, Ruth Fogelman and Channah Moshe whose poems were published in the anthology.

February - March 2021: Congratulations to:

Deborah Golden, whose poem "Gathered In" was published in an online book entitled In Silence We Wait (edited by Richard M. Grove, 2021) as part of the ongoing Poetry Pandemic Project. 

Judy Koren, whose terzanelle "A Night of Rain" has been published in the Formal Poetry section of the literary magazine Better Than Starbucks, Vol. VI no. 1 (February 2021).

January 2021: Congratulations to:

Diane Ray, whose poem “Capitol Offense” has been published on the website of Indolent Books, in their section Transition: Poems in the Afterglow o1 | 07 | 2021.

Wendy Blumfield, whose review of A. B. Yehoshua's new novel, The Tunnel, has been published in The Jerusalem Report.

John Gallas, our 2018 Reuben Rose first-prize winner and a judge for the 2019 competition, whose new book, The Gnawing Flood, has been published by Cerasus Poetry. “Winner of the Bronze Medal Award in the 2020 Cerasus Poetry Olympics."

December 2020: congratulations to:

Ellen Jaffe  (USA), whose 2006 young-adult novel, Feast of Lights (for readers 10-14 or so) has been published as a Kindle e-book, (the paper edition is out of print).

November 2020: congratulations to:

Yochanan Zaqantov, whose second e-book of poetry has been published on Amazon. It is titled “Modern Romantic Poetry” under Yochanan’s pen name, Ivan Labombarbe.

Pesach Rotem, whose poem “Light and Darkness” has been published in Open Arts Forum at https://openartsforum.com/elections-matter/#Pesach_Rotem.

Donna Bechar, whose poem, “Hers” is published in the new 2020 IAWE Anthology, arc28, The Kiss, to be launched on December 17 on Zoom.

Judy Koren, whose poem “Midnight Cricket” has been accepted for publication in Lighten Up Online – the online magazine of humorous verse.

David Fellerman, who has been interviewed by Judaica Spotlight highlighting his life, his art, and his poetry. https://judaicainthespotlight.com/meet-the-artist-david-fellerman/

October 2020: congratulations to:

Susan Olsburgh, who was awarded a Volunteer of the Year by AACI for her 10 years running the monthly workshop, Poetry Please, now in its tenth year. Susan introduces a selection of poems on topics such as medicine, sports, music and place names.

Pesach Rotem, whose poem “Professor Hofstadter’s Brain” was nominated for a Best of the Net Award by Synchronized Chaos Magazine, https://www.facebook.com/synchchaos/posts/3296515140394937.

Rick Lupert (of Poetry Super Highway, one of our affiliated organizations) who has published his 25th book, The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express, poems written last summer while Rick was in Japan.

September 2020: congratulations to:

Wendy Dickstein,  whose poem “Esther’s Angels” was published by the Jewish Book Council in its Berru Poetry series: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/esthers-angels

Anne Hall Levine (USA), whose poem “My Rose of Sharon” has been published in Poetica Magazine Contemporary Jewish Writing. See https://www.poeticamagazine.com/anne-hall-levine.

Judy Koren, who has had three poems published in different sections of the September issue of the light-verse webzine, Lighten Up Online:  https://www.lightenup-online.co.uk/index.php/issue-51-september-2020; and whose poem "Heatwave" has been published in the formal-poetry section of the September/October issue of Better Than Starbucks: https://www.betterthanstarbucks.org/poetry-unplugged

August 2020: congratulations to:

Seymour Mayne, whose book, Perfume: Poems and Word Sonnets, has been published by St. Catharines, Ontario: Ronald P. Frye & Co. See here for further details.

David Fellerman, who is showing his paintings in an exhibition at the Ben Ami Gallery Summer Sale in Tel Aviv. The exhibit opened on July 30th and runs through August 25th. As a bonus, each of his art pieces contains a poem of his that relates to the title of the painting. You can see his gallery of work on his website at www.davidfellerman.com

July 2020: a quiet month for publications, apparently. But congratulations to:

Wendy Blumfield – whose essay “Coping with Social Isolation, including a photo of Wendy with her late husband, David, was published in the June 8, 2020 issue of The Jerusalem Report. It is online at https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/coping-with-social-isolation-628574.

Judy Koren – whose poem "Dear Adam" was one of the winners of Lighten Up Online's March competition, and whose poem "Jaffa, as Microcosm" has been published in the June 2020 issue of the Taj Mahal Review.

Michael Stone, whose poem “Fresh Air” has been published in the 2019 Poetry Edition of Mizmor Anthology.

June 2020: our members have been busy! Congratulations to:

Judith R. Robinson, who was named Featured Poet in the current issue of PoetryMagazine. See http://www.poetrymagazine.com/poetry_magazine_zawinski_judith_r_robinson.html.

Stanley Barkan, Helen Bar-Lev, Lidia Chiarelli, and Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, whose poems and/or paintings have been published in the 2020 Anthology of Immagine & Poesia. See Immagine & Poesia 2020 Anthology