Sivan Baskin: Multilingual Israeli Poet in the Age of Globalization

Abstract

Sivan Baskin, a poet and literary translator, started writing on the Internet in the early years of the millennium on the “New Stage” site and has published three books of poetry. Baskin’s writing is characterized by multilingualism, inserting words from various languages, written in their own alphabet, within a poem in Hebrew. Although these words or phrases are few and far between, they are conspicuous by their presence and foreignness, representing multiculturalism. Baskin is the first Hebrew poet in multicultural Israel to do this. This article cites four poems that reflect Baskin’s unique writing, which is derived from the combination of her two mother-countries in her life: Lithuania as a Jewish exile, her first homeland, and Israel as the Jewish State into which Jews from around the world were gathered. As an introduction to Baskin’s poetry, this article presents Israel as a multicultural and multilingual country.