(Israel, 1975) By Anat Levin/Guy Perl “Hadas Gilad’s book is filled with kisses”, writes her contemporary, poet Anat Levin: “Kisses that are given or received, or are tempting or regrettable. And there are also breaths and a central aspiration - to be ‘one’ with the world, that is, to be in constant connection with the other, nature, memory, and with earlier texts and cultures. The main thing is to remain in dialogue”.
Miri Ben Simhon (France, 1950–1996) By Lisa Katz Miri Ben Simhon’s poetry faces Mizrahi women’s lives in Israel straight on. Her work is sensitive and brutal, personal and political. “In the literary arena at the beginning of the 1980s”, writes a critic, “it took a lot of courage – not to speak about Mizrahim […] but as one”. In ‘GIRL FROM THE SLUMS’ Ben Simhon voices an ironic monologue by a character, Aliza Alfandari, who desperately tries to please the world from which she is disinherited, “a place meant for others”. Try as she might, she cannot enter it by …