Lit&Lunch: Israel’s Beautiful, Tormented Poet Dahlia Ravikovitch
111 Minna Gallery | 111 Minna Street | San Francisco, CA
Dahlia Ravikovich was more than one of Israel’s most celebrated poets: she was also an outspoken activist who once aided Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish when he was under house arrest. Translators Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld talk about this enigmatic figure, the difficulties of translating from Hebrew, and the challenges that arise when two translators work together on a single book.
Chana Bloch is the author of four books of poetry and translator of contemporary Israeli poets. Among her awards are the Poetry Society of America’s Di Castagnola Award, the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and the 2012 Meringoff Poetry Award.
Chana Kronfeld teaches Hebrew, Yiddish, and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her co-translation of Yehuda Amichai’s Open Closed Open won the National Endowment for the Arts and the Marie Syrkin Awards.
Dahlia Ravikovitch (1936–2005) is considered by many to be the greatest Hebrew woman poet of all time. Widely honored for her artistry and admired for her courage as a peace activist, she was awarded the Israel Prize, the highest national honor, and cited as “a central pillar of Hebrew lyric poetry.” Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch (W.W. Norton, 2009) presents, for the first time in English, the full trajectory of her life in poetry.