We’d planned an in-person seminar on the poetry of Emma Lazarus and Bob Dylan. But it became clear that this could not happen: Iran was bombing Israel and we all had to
stick close to home and/or whatever bomb shelters we could access. The moderators of the in-person work-shop preferred not to do it online. Just a few days before the date, our workshop coordinator realized the war wouldn’t stop and asked Ann Bar-Dov if she could dream up an alternative workshop at short notice.
Ann responded brilliantly to the challenge, with what she called “a meditation” on the Book of Jonah — but, knowing we were all very stressed-out, she chose the emotionally-neutral focus of the role of “things” — objects — in that book. She briefly reviewed the contents of the four chapters of Jonah, and surveyed the objects in it — the ship, the sea, the things thrown overboard, the “big fish”, the sukah, the animals and plants — noting that some are ascribed human-like emotions and that there is a surreal or super-normal feel to the whole. She invited participants to consider how physical things can play significant and sometimes mysterious roles in both literature and life, perhaps even challenging our assumptions about reality.
The writing exercise, on the prompt “The Role of Things”, asked the participants to list ten things in their life, choose one, and write a poem about it. As in the Book of Jonah, they could look at the item from their own point of view, or attribute consciousness to it, or give it powers it would not normally have.
Despite three bomb alerts during that morning, the last all all-clear sounding just ten minutes before the zoom session began, all 25 registered participants attended, and produced coherent and lovely pieces even under these conditions.
As usual, after giving participants a month to edit/polish their poem, we produced an e-chapbook of poems started or written at the workshop which was sent to all attendees.
Many thanks to Ann for preparing this workshop at short notice, and to our hard-working workshop coordinator, Elana Dorfman, for organizing it.
Regretfully, we didn’t record screenshots from this Zoom workshop.
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English 