Voices Israel anthology 2025: Celebrating English poetry shaped by war, love, and memory

The Voices Israel Group of Poets in English will celebrate its venerable 55th anniversary in 2026. It was born back in 1971. Its founding members came together to launch a body dedicated to fostering the writing and appreciation of poetry in Israel, and the enterprise has blossomed.

There are also two Zoom global groups for members with no convenient local group or who are located overseas. In addition, Voices Israel publishes a monthly newsletter and organizes workshops throughout the year, sometimes led by distinguished guest poets.

The group also publishes an annual anthology of poems submitted by anyone, from anywhere. Poets may offer up to three poems each, and every poem is evaluated on its merits by the editorial board, who are not informed of the poet’s name.

In this anthology, 132 poems, the work of 71 poets, were selected for inclusion out of more than 300 submitted from across the globe.

Joanne Jagoda, writing from the United States, submitted a heart-rending poem titled “The Girl in the Baggy Sweatshirt.”

She writes about her granddaughter. Her opening lines are: “She sprawls across his fresh grave / her quiet anguish speaking volumes. / ‘Why did you leave me?’ she asks him, / but he doesn’t answer.”

“Red Puddles,” by US poet Robert Bain, tells of the personal experience of being wounded under fire. “Red puddles where my friends lay” is a line mid-poem. Later, he writes: “My body floating. Lifted into a van / Rescuers saving this life in their hands.” And he ends with: “Pray we forget the nightmares and ease the pain / Never forget our promise… Never again.”

Wendy Blumfield compares Israel’s anemone with the Flanders poppy that became a symbol of World War I. In “Buds of Hope,” she describes how the anemone, which she calls “a modest flower,” “soon will carpet / The killing fields of the South / The blood-drenched soil / Churned over by tanks and armory.”

The Editors have grouped several poems on the themes of love, family, and food.

In “Gorgonzola,” Miriam Webber paints a mouthwatering picture of that creamy cheese while conjuring up a romantic picture of “a summer evening, Italian piazza / a restaurant table, outside, with him.”

Stanley H. Barkan from the US waxes lyrical in “Pickle,” describing “the kosher pickle store on Blake Avenue” as his paradise, and the kosher pickle as “ambrosia.”

There are several moving love poems.

“The Quest,” by Amiel Scholz, is a beautifully conceived classic 14-line rhyming sonnet. His first line is: “What is love, we ask: I seek an answer.” His conclusion is to liken love to “the incandescent butterfly.”

David Silverman from the US contributes “Origin Story,” his account of meeting the Orthodox Jewish girl of his dreams, recounted many years after he married her.

American poet Art Heifetz writes of “Love in the Latter Part of Life,” which he describes as “More than a sudden squall… It is an unexpected gift.”

These poems are conceived in a variety of styles.

Most poets in this anthology, in the modern tradition, have abandoned rhyme and meter in favor of elevated and multifaceted prose broken into short lines to emphasize meaning, but there are more than a few conceived in more traditional forms.

Two of the poets represented in this collection abandon the practice of using short lines for emphasis, but present their poems in prose form. In “Baseball Mom,” Israeli poet Ricky Rapoport Friesem compares taking her young son to play baseball with how she will have to accompany him shortly to the “army induction center.” Just as she refrained from shouting “Duck!” back then, she will not now be shouting “Run!”

In “Wintry Moments,” Israeli Robert Findysz finds the promise of spring even in the depths of winter.

Luiza Carol achieves a tour de force with her poem “Fragile Is the Threshold.” It is reversible. In other words, the poem can be read from bottom to top, and the meaning does not change. The first two lines run “fragile is the threshold / between laughter and tears,” while the last two lines are: “between tear and smile / fragile is the threshold.”