We held the launch event of Volume 46, the 2020 Voices Israel Anthology, via Zoom on September 22nd, and it turned out to be our biggest event ever! 51 people attended, 38 of whom read their poems from the Anthology. Several of our overseas members joined us – from Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada, and only two members could not attend and requested proxy readers. And we were pleased to welcome two new members who had only just joined Voices Israel.
This year’s anthology was more than ever a great team effort. We warmly thanked its chief editor, Dina Yehuda, and “virtually” awarded her a small gift (in Real Life sent her by mail) in token of our appreciation for her huge efforts in both editing and helping to proof-read the anthology. Heartfelt thanks also to the editorial team of David Fellerman, Edit Gavriely and Yehudit Goldfarb for the many hours they spent judging the entries; and to Susan Olsburgh, our past president, who devoted an enormous amount of time to the proof-reading right down to the final printer-proofs. And last but not least, to our Treasurer Chanita Millman, who not only handles the financial side of anthology orders but also mails out all the copies to members, year after year – a tremendous job. Chanita, thank you!
Our anthology designer and producer, Johnmichael Simon, has announced that he is stepping down, to our regret, after many years in this role. We “virtually” awarded him a small honorarium which, while it cannot approach the value of all he has done for Voices Israel, will we hope assure him of our gratitude and esteem.
We recorded most of the event on Zoom, but since we didn’t yet have a YouTube channel, our secretary Linda sent our members a link to download the files. So the video is not on our YouTube channel. But below are a couple of screenshots to give a slight feel of the event.
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English 