Before the horrendous Hamas attack on Israel of October 7th, we were all set to launch Volume 49 of the Voices Israel Anthology with a hybrid (face-to-face plus Zoom) event at the Netanya Stage Karaoke Bar. After October 7, the world was different. We decided to show our defiance, and determination to carry on, by holding the event on October 23rd as planned, but with missile alerts all over southern and central Israel, could not meet in person and reverted to Zoom-only.
54 people registered for the event and 49 actually attended. In addition to members, we had a dozen non-members contributors (mostly from abroad) whose poems had been published in the Anthology, and several of our overseas members also came: from the USA, Canada, the UK, and Ireland.
37 poets read, or had proxy-read, one of their poems from the Anthology. Many of them had had two poems accepted, but as in previous Zoom events, there was only time to read one poem each.
We sent out the Anthology to our members in early August. Once again, we received many compliments on its appearance and its content. After a run of blues and browns, we opted on green for this year’s cover. Dina Yehuda, our long-term, dedicated Chief Editor, yet again produced a volume containing a series of quality poems arranged in a logical flow of themes. Her talk on the anthology at this launch event explained how she does this. We gave her a Steimatsky gift card as a small token of our appreciation — despite our hopes to present it to her at the in-person event, it had to be mailed as before..
Heartfelt thanks to the editorial team of Eli Ben-Joseph, Wendy Blumfield, and Elana Dorfman, who complete, with this year’s Anthology, their second and final year as editors/judges. Thanks too, to Helen bar-Lev, for agreeing to the use of her lovely painting “Tsfat with Almond Tree” for the Anthology’s front cover, and for doing the final proof-read. And last but not least, to our Treasurer Chanita Millman, who not only handles the financial side of anthology orders but also mails out, with unfailing promptness and accuracy, the right number of copies to members and others who have ordered them, year after year. In this as in so many Voices activities – we couldn’t do it without her!
As usual, we recorded the event on Zoom, and the video is on our YouTube channel. It may also be viewed directly via this link.
More information about the annual Anthology and how to submit poems to it is detailed under Voices Israel Anthology from the main menu.
We recorded the Zoom event to the cloud, and discovered only after the event that it had recorded everything in Speaker view, instead of recording what was actually on the recorder’s screen. So this year we have no screenshots of galleries. But below are headshots from the video of some of the poets reading their poems. The first row shows several non-member contributors who joined us for the launch; the other two rows show members (we welcome Ephrat Huss who joined Voices Israel soon after the launch).
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English 