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On this week’s episode, host Marcela Sulak reads poems written by Batsheva Dori-Carlier from her debut collection Soul Search, which won the 2015 Helicon Ramy Ditzanny Prize for emerging authors. Batsheva Dori-Carlier was born in Jerusalem to parents who left Iraq in the 1950s. For 18 years, she worked as a macrobiotics teacher, chef and consultant in Israel, Belgium, Germany and England, and critics say her poetry “lifts life situations into the realm of art.”

Here is an excerpt from Neve Shalom, about an intentional community jointly established by Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa:

“Under an olive tree in Neve Shalom it’s impossible
to write “olive tree” without murdering some dove it’s impossible to write
“Neve Shalom” without entering into a war.
It’s impossible to say “I saw a prickly pear bush this morning
on the way to meditation” without quarreling with the thorns
that words send beyond their stone walls, ours,
whose olive tree is this and why is each leaf so significant, stuck in my mouth
like the bitter word of the war that I didn’t start and I can’t end.”

In the episode, Batsheva Dori-Carlier also sings a rendition of an Um Kultum.

Text:
All poems by Batsheva Dori-Carlier, translated by Lisa Katz, from Poetry International

Music:
Umm Kulthum – Enta Omry
Umm Kulthum – Alf Leila

Producer: Ariella Plachta
Technical producer: Tammy Goldenberg