On Ruins and Return

Rachel Tzvia Back - poet, translator and professor of literature - was born in the USA and has lived in Israel for the last 27 years. Her poetry collections include Azimuth (Sheep Meadow Press) and The Buffalo Poems (Duration Press). Back's translations of Hebrew poetry have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poetry from Antiquity to the Present (The Feminist Press). Her translations of the poetry of Lea Goldberg - a pre-eminent and too often overlooked poet of modern Hebrew letters - were collected in Lea Goldberg: Selected Poetry and Drama (Toby Press) and represent the most significant edition of Goldberg's poetry in English to date. These translations were awarded a 2005 PEN Translation grant and Back's translations of Goldberg's collection With this Night were awarded a Hadassah-Brandeis Research Grant. Back's current major poetic project is an English edition of a collection of 43 Hebrew poets protesting Israel's continuing occupation of the West Bank - an anthology entitled With an Iron Pen: Hebrew Protest Poems 1984-2004. Back's poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Dreaming the Actual: Contemporary Fiction and Poetry by Israeli Women Writers. She is the author of a critical monograph on the avant-garde American poet Susan Howe, entitled Led by Language: the Poetry and Poetics of Susan Howe (University of Alabama Press). Back teaches at Oranim College and Bar-Ilan University. Rachel Tzvia Back lives in the Galilee, in the north of Israel.