Efrat Mishori, poet, essayist and doctoral student in literature at Tel Aviv University, was born in Israel in 1964. She has published four poetry books, and a fairy tale in verse for children, receiving the Israeli Prime Minister’s Prize for Literature in 2001. In 1997 Mishori composed “I am the Model of Poetry”, a one-woman show including pop music, and calls herself “an ‘anti-poetical’ poet involved in an intimate relationship with language”.
Israeli critic Menachem Benn praised Mishori’s first book this way:
Since there has not been even one word of review about it in the Israeli literary supplements, I can imagine just how the author feels and I am impelled to make a statement: this book, despite its initially off-putting, megalomaniac appearance (large format, the author’s name in huge letters in Hebrew and English), is one of the most important poetic accomplishments of the last several years. An independent achievement, original, experimental, powerful, which the critical apparatus in Israel is not equipped to recognize, and therefore has not. Meanwhile, I have a suggestion for a headline for an article: “Mishori Engineering” I would call it, after the soul geometry and soul engineering typical of her poetry.
Poems
The Field
Metallic Wing
Pellets of Glass
Theonewhosprangup
Ballad of the Wise Efrat
Also on this site
The Importance of Lightness
Review by Yochai Oppenheimer.
I am the Model of Poetry
Article by Galia Yahav.
Bibliography
In Hebrew
The Physical Mouth (Ha-pe ha-fizi), Ha-kibbutz ha-meuchad, 2002.
Bites of Small Fish (Neshikhot shel dagim qtannim), Even Hoshen, 1999.
As Far As Efrat (Mi-merxaqqey Efrat), Ha-kibbutz ha-meuchad, 1996.
Efrat Mishori, Poems 1990-1994 (Efrat Mishori, Shirim 1990-1994), Hotza’a ‛atzmit, 1994.
Links
In English
Feminist Press
A Mishori poem in Hebrew and English in The Defiant Muse.
In Hebrew
Haaretz
A bit of bio.
