Poetry

Content type
Collection

Selina Solomons

Selina Solomons was a turn-of-the-twentieth-century activist and writer, best known for her leadership role in the 1911 suffrage campaign that granted California women the right to vote. Solomons belonged to a prominent Jewish American family and spent her life in the San Francisco Bay Area. She employed multiple genres in advocacy of women’s rights, including speeches, poetry, drama, short fiction, and a manual-cum-suffrage history titled How We Won the Vote in California

Consecration of the Aleph Bet Book Cover

Q & A with Brazilian Poet Leonor Scliar-Cabral

Deborah Leipziger

JWA chats with Brazilian poet Leonor Scliar-Cabral as she launches her new book, Consecration of the Aleph Bet. 

Topics: Poetry

Yonit Naaman featured in an episode of "A Tale of Five Poets"

June 24, 2018

Poet Yonit Namaan was born in Yehud, Israel, in 1975 to Yemenite parents. On June 25, 2018, she was featured in the episode “Spleen and Failure” of the web series A Tale of Five Poets, which offers a close look into the lives and minds of five prominent Israeli poets. 

'Smashing the Tablets' Book Cover - Cropped

Midrash for a New Generation

Sarah Groustra

This bold anthology reimagines biblical stories through modern voices and identities.

Birth of Yiddish poet and novelist Ida Maze

July 9, 1893

As an influential Jewish author and communal leader, Ida Maze played a crucial role in helping fellow Jewish writers flee Europe after World War II by securing Canadian entry visas for them and helping to publish their works. Maze was part of a greater population of Yiddish-language speakers and writers in Montreal who cultivated community through their shared love for Jewish culture. 

Marge Piercy cropped

Q & A with Poet Marge Piercy

Deborah Leipziger

JWA talks to poet Marge Piercy about her latest book, self-care, and fighting for causes you believe in. 

Topics: Poetry, Protests
Collage of 4 women poets

Four Women Who Shaped Jewish Poetry

Mildred Faintly

Writing in German, Yiddish, and Hebrew, these four Jewish women poets, transformed language, identity, and poetry itself—yet their names remain overlooked in literary history.

Topics: Poetry

Blanche Bendahan

Blanche Bendahan, born in Algeria in 1893, to a Sephardi father and a Catholic mother, became a renowned writer, poet, and political activist. One of her most famous works, Mazaltob, addressed themes of tradition versus modernity, women's rights, and the intersections between Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. She continued to write about her homeland until her death in 1975, combining her multicultural background with modernist style.

Bonus Episode: Sonnet for America: Reprise

Just over eight years ago, Judith and Nahanni were looking for solace after Donald Trump rode a xenophobic, misogynistic and hate-filled campaign to his first presidential victory. In a November 2016 episode of Can We Talk?, we turned to the poet Emma Lazarus, the Jewish woman who gave the statue of liberty a voice and transformed her into the symbolic mother of exiles. Now, as President Trump turns refugees and asylum seekers away, tightens our borders, and orders the deportation of thousands of immigrants, that conversation feels relevant all over again. We begin our spring season in March. For now, we're sharing that 2016 episode about Emma Lazarus, "Sonnet for America."

Barbara Ostfeld

Barbara Ostfeld became the first ordained female cantor at age 22, serving a number of temples in her tenure. Ostfeld was passionate about music from a young age and finds joy in her work through poetry and musical theory alike. She is also a writer; her essays on feminism and cantorial work have been printed in several publications. 

Aurora Levins Morales and Book Cover

Q & A with Poet Aurora Levins Morales

Deborah Leipziger

JWA talks to poet Aurora Levins Morales about her new book of poetry, Rimonim: Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation, and considers the power of protest, prophecy, and music in these times that call us to action.

Topics: Poetry, Protests
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Q & A with Poet Joy Ladin

Deborah Leipziger

JWA chats with poet and activist Joy Ladin about her two new books, gender transformations, and resisting tyranny.

Collage of painted Stars of David

Finding Spirituality Through Art

Margaret Lockman

Religion and art are both about turning individual experiences into community ones.

Friha Ben Adiba

Friḥa Ben Adiba (c. 1730-1756) is the sole woman Hebrew poet from North Africa, who wrote Hebrew liturgical and messianic poems in the way of hundreds of rabbinic poets. She was born and grew up in Morocco but around 1750 arrived with her family in Tunis, where she died a few years later as a martyr in a pogrom. After her death she became a saintly figure for the Tunisian Jews. 

Elana Dykewomon

Elana Dykewomon was a poet, novelist, editor, theorist, lesbian, and cultural worker. Her lesbian and Jewish identities and commitments informed and shaped her award-winning novels and other writings, and she made significant theoretical contributions to lesbian separatism and fat liberation.

'Styx' Translation Book Cover

Q & A with Poet and Translator Mildred Faintly

Deborah Leipziger

JWA talks to Mildred Faintly about her recently published translation of Else Lasker-Schüler's book of poetry, Styx.

Gloria Gervitz

The Mexican Ashkenazi poet Gloria Gervitz (1943–2022) is known for her award-winning, book-length poem Migrations (Migraciones). This poem, an epic journey through the individual and collective memories of Ashkenazi women emigrants to Mexico, which she began writing in 1976, took her 44 years to complete. In 2018, Gervitz won the prestigious Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award for Migraciones.

"The Book Of Jerusalem" Cover

"The Book of Jerusalem" by Julia Vinograd

Mildred Faintly

Out of her personal suffering and poetic genius, Julia Vinograd created an iconic image of Jerusalem that is powerful, feminist, and unforgettably, startlingly modern.

Julia Vinograd

Julia Vinograd was a street poet and the author of 68 slender volumes of verse widely admired for their vivid portraits of bohemians and street people in twentieth-century Berkeley, California. Her writing, which evolved in café open mic readings, is notable for its oratorical clarity, emotional warmth, and surreal imagination. 

Jessica Jacobs Headshot Cropped

7 Questions For Poet Jessica Jacobs

Sarah Biskowitz

JWA chats with Jessica Jacobs, poet and founder and executive director of the organization Yetzirah: A Home for Jewish Poetry. 

Topics: Poetry
Collage of Jewish Women Who Died in 2023

Jewish Women Whose Memories I’m Carrying into 2024

Judith Rosenbaum

The year 2023 brought the deaths of several powerful and influential Jewish women, whose insights and voices changed the world and are all the more painful to lose in this difficult time. 

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Q & A with Poet and Rabbi Mónica Gomery

Sarah Groustra

JWA chats with poet and rabbi Mónica Gomery about her newest poetry collection, Might Kindred

Jean Trounstine

Project
Women Who Dared

Judith Rosenbaum interviewed Jean Trounstine on July 21, 2000, in Lowell, Massachusetts for the Women Who Dared Oral History Project. Trounstine details her Jewish background in Cincinnati, how it shaped her political lens, and her prison reform work, including theater productions with incarcerated women.

Anna Ziegler Headshot

7 Questions For Anna Ziegler

Sarah Groustra

JWA talks to playwright Anna Ziegler. 

Topics: Theater, Poetry, Plays

Judith Chalmer

Project
DAVAR: Vermont Jewish Women's History Project

Sandra Stillman Gartner and Ann Buffum interviewed Judith Chalmer in Winooski, Vermont, on November 3 and December 8, 2005, as part of DAVAR’s oral history project. Chalmer discusses her family's history, her creative path as a writer, and her reflections on her Jewish identity and the role of women in Judaism, inspired by her father's experiences during the Holocaust and her efforts to honor those who helped her family.

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