Exploring Israeli literature in English translation. Host Marcela Sulak takes you through Israel’s literary countryside, cityscapes, and psychological terrain, and the lives of the people who create it.
https://tlv1.fm/israelintranslation
Desert flowers with deep roots
“... Hanging by a thread, my fathers jostle together,
A sleeve of Hispania cloth permeated with the scent of jasmine
On an austere robe from the lands of years gone by
On a breeze bearing blows, payes and pelts…”
So reads a section from “Fathers,” a poem by Tel Aviv-born novelist, poet, and theater director Michal Govrin, whose poetry our host Marcela Sulak introduces to us today. The daughter of an Israeli pioneer father and a mother who survived the Holocaust, Govrin’s work is concerned with the legacy of trauma left to children of Holocaust survivors.
Govrin has described her poems as the flowers of a desert plant with very deep roots; some have roots as deep as fifteen feet, but when we see the flower we never imagine how much of the plant remains invisible to the eye.