[button style=’orange’ url=’http://tlv1.fm/israelintranslation’ target=’_blank’ icon=’iconic-rss’]Subscribe to this podcast[/button]
Today, host Marcela Sulak reads the work of Tel Aviv-based poet Tahel Frosh. Her debut poetry collection, from which these poems have been chosen, was published in 2014. Translator Adriana Jacobs calls it one of the most urgent and political books of poetry published in recent years. Here is an excerpt from “The Mountains of Spain”:
“All of this is so impossible
that it holds back thoughts of love and
lust and my will to breathe the air
after rain so much
that I’ll lose myself in a book
called Cocaine Nights
and get mad when I read about people with
money, so much money
that they retire to the mountains of Spain
and sunbathe in fancy villas
at the age of thirty-eight.”
Frosh’s stunningly crafted poems, which include a number of prose poems, offer a critique of Israel’s free-market economy, the housing crisis, and globalization through the perspective of Israel’s working class. She has degrees in law and psychology, and is currently working on a doctorate in literature. She co-edited the anthology Avodat Gilui (“Unveiling Work”) and is a member of the art and social justice collective Cultural Guerrilla.
Music:
Uri Schreter (music) Tahel Frosh (lyrics) – Shirey Zman
Maya Belzitsman & Matan Efrat – Yafa Kalevana (orig. by Evyatar Banai)
Adam Yodfat (music) Tahel Frosh (lyrics) – Shir Tshuka
Producer: Laragh Widdess
Technical producer: Alex Benish
