Innovation and Tradition: Translating Yona Wallach & Rivka Miriam (And Me)

Abstract

In this personal essay, the author recounts her experience as a new immigrant to Israel in 1978, when she began to learn Hebrew. Since then, Zisquit's work on two women poets, Yona Wallach and Rivka Miriam, has been central to her life as an Israeli, and has influenced her own poetic practice and creativity. The essay includes several poems by each of Wallach and Miriam, with Zisquit's translations and detailed account of the problems they posed for her as a translator.