The awards event for the 4th Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize – held, as before, via Zoom – took place on April 30th 2023, immediately before the awards event for the 2022 Reuben Rose competition.
Holding the joint event by Zoom enables many more people to take part, including our overseas members, thus giving our young poets an impressive audience to showcase their achievement. In all 52 people attended the joint event, not only from Israel but also from the UK, Ireland, the USA and Canada.
Professor Anthony Joseph, Bar’s grandfather and the sponsor of this prize, gave as before a moving account of Bar and her poetry, including an English version of part of a biography of Bar written (in Hebrew) by her best friend Miryam. We showed a video of her poem from the “Echoes of Bar” series: “Hope” set to music by Lior Soltz and sung by Tzlil Rubinstein, with a beautiful animation (viewable on YouTube via this link).
The competition administrator, Michele Bustin, then added a few comments about the competition and thanked all involved in its organization and publicity, especially the teachers whose efforts resulted in many more entries this year than last.
This year we had four winning poems, since two tied for 3rd prize and the judges just could not decide between them! — and no fewer than four Honorable Mentions, another indication of the high quality of the poems received.
The highlight of the evening was of course hearing the four winners read their poems: “The Little Things” by Reuth Katz, aged 14, which won first prize; “City Lights” by Shilo Aloni, aged 18 (second prize), “Feathers” by Amit Shaham aged 15 and “Glass Skin” by Or Gordin, aged 17, which won joint third prize; followed by the four which won an Honorable Mention: “Like sin(x)” by Eyal Bechor, aged 16; “Something very gentle by Marta “March” Zorin, aged 15; “The Jewish Year” by Reut Widawsky, aged 13; and “Tomorrow, next week, next year by Yarden Or, aged 18. All the poems may be read and downloaded here (PDF file).
We recorded the event via Zoom and the video is on the Voices Israel YouTube channel; all our members and everyone registered for the event received a link. Feel free to share it with whoever you like!
Screenshots from the Zoom event
Reut Katz reading her poem
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English 