Rachel Tzvia Back, author of In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner, will be offering a number of public events in Ann Arbor, Michigan:
Sunday, September 14, 6pm
Temple Beth Emeth, 2309 Packard Street: Evening in the Library with Authors. Israeli poet and translator Rachel Tzvia Back will talk on the poetry and poetics of pre-eminent Hebrew poet Tuvia Ruebner, poetic peer of Yehuda Amichai and Dan Pagis, literary executor and lifelong friend of Lea Goldberg, award-winning translator of Agnon and others. Back will read select Ruebner poems, and discuss the translation process that led to this first-ever bilingual Hebrew-English collection of Ruebner’s essential poetry.
Tuesday, September 16, 4pm
Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, 202 South Thayer Street: “From Holocaust to Protest: The Poetry and Poetics of Tuvia Ruebner.” Rachel Tzvia Back will talk on the poetry and poetics of pre-eminent Hebrew poet Tuvia Ruebner, poetic peer of Yehuda Amichai and Dan Pagis, literary executor and lifelong friend of Lea Goldberg, award-winning translator of Agnon and others. Back’s lecture will track the central tenets of Ruebner’s poetry, the trajectory of his work from being a voice of the Holocaust generation to offering poetry of protest, and the uniquely life-affirming sensibility of this poetic Elder of the Tribe.
Rachel Tzvia Back lives in the Galilee, where her great great great grandfather settled in the 1830s. She has lectured widely in the United States and is the recipient of various awards, including a PEN Translation grant, a Hadassah-Brandeis Research Grant, and a Dora Maar Brown Foundation Fellowship. Previous volumes of translation include Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama and With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry. Her own poetry collection, A Messenger Comes (Elegies) was voted by Forward Magazine one of five most notable poetry collections of 2012. Her most recent publication is In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner (Hebrew Union College Press and the University of Pittsburgh Press), the first volume of Ruebner’s poetry to appear in English.