Our local groups hold regular monthly meetings, face-to-face or via Zoom. For members with no convenient local group, we also have a Global Group which includes members from both Israel and abroad: again, see the Our Team page for contact details of its coordinator.
Nationally, we have a lot going on during the year! Here’s what we’ve been doing over the past few months:
April to June 2024
We held the awards events for the Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize and for the Reuben Rose competition on April 14th at 7 pm, via Zoom.
We held our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on April 7, 2024 at 7 pm, via Zoom. As usual it ended with an Open Mic.
Our Anthology judges are busy judging the submissions to this year’s Anthology; the submission period ended at the end of March.
January to March 2024
We’ve announced the results of the 2023 Reuben Rose International Competition. Congratulations to all the winners and recipients of Honourable Mentions!
We’ve produced the chapbook resulting from our latest mini-Zoom workshop, “Broken Things,” and have distributed it to all workshop participants.
October to December 2023
Our next scheduled event is a mini-Zoom workshop entitled “Broken Things” on December 4th at 7 pm Israel time, The chapbook from our October 18 workshop, “Write At This Moment,” has been produced and sent to all participants.
Judging of entries for the 2023 Reuben Rose competition is ongoing; winners are expected to be announced in mid-December. Meanwhile the submission period for the 2024 Anthology opens on December 17th.
The submission period for the 5th (2024) Bar Sagi Young Poets Prize competition opened on November 15th and runs through the end of February 2024. To enter, see the Bar Sagi Prize Rules and Guidelines page.
Our launch event for the 2023 Voices Israel Anthology was held on October 23rd as planned, only via Zoom instead of a hybrid in-person plus Zoom event. For details see the 2023 Anthology Launch page.
Following the horrific Hamas attack and slaughter of over 1,200 people, mainly civilians, our “Fern Hill” workshop scheduled for October 18th was postponed. But our workshop coordinator, Elana Dorfman, and Anthology editor, Dina Yehuda, gave a joint workshop on that date, “Write at this Moment,” giving participants a much-needed opportunity to explore emotions and try to focus on the positive. Details are on the page for that workshop. An e-chapbook of the poems written or started as this workshop has been produced and sent to all participants..
We have finalized an agreement with Proquest o add all available years of the Anthology, including back issue to their database. This is in addition to an ongoing agreement with another major database producer, EBSCO, which receives issues of the Anthology yearly as they are produced.
July to September 2023
We’ve set a date for the launch of the 2023 Anthology — October 23rd at the Karaoke Stage Bar in Netanya. Save the date! We’re planning a joint in-person-plus-Zoom event, for both Israeli and overseas members.
We’re planning a Zoom workshop on October 18th, led by our long-term member Eli Joseph. Details are in the September newsletter: registration coming soon.
We are close to an agreement with Proquest (see last month’s Newsletter) to add all available years of the Anthology to their database.
The Reuben Rose Competitions opened for submissions on July 10th. Fees and prizes have been raised, after a decade or more of no change. To see the new fees and prize amounts, and to enter the competition, visit our Reuben Rose Competition page.
In early July we produced the PDF chapbook for the Zoomed “Crossroads – the choices we make” workshop and sent it to all participants.
We also finished production of the 2023 Anthology and sent it to all paid-up members. To order extra copies as a member, or to buy copies as a non-member, see our Buying the Anthology page.
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English 