Poet

Lyor Shternberg

(Israel, 1967)

Biography

The poetry of Lyor Shternberg “deflects attention to the dark stains of reality, not only those issues subject to public debate”, according to a compatriot critic. One might argue along these lines that Shternberg walks the fine line between belonging to his own society (and its ills) and belonging as well to the larger universe of poetry where each individual poet uses the imagery of his own place to describe these “dark stains”.

The author of four prizewinning books of poetry (a fifth, Evening Rituals, was published in early 2012), he is also the translator into Hebrew of the work of a particular group of Irish poets intensely aware of their Irishness yet with a universal appeal: Patrick Kavanagh – Matbaot ha-tit (Coins of Clay; Keshev, 2005); Eavan Boland – in a collection forthcoming in 2012; and Seamus Heaney – in a work in progress co-translated with Ariel Zinder.

Shternberg was born in Petah Tikva in 1967 and lives in Jerusalem, where he teaches literature, writing and film. His first manuscript, Home, was awarded the Haifa University Adler Prize in 1998 and published the following year. His second volume of poetry, A Day’s Labour, was awarded the AKUM Prize and published in 2001. His third, The Page is a Landscape (2004), was awarded the Jerusalem Zevulun Hammer Prize for literature; his fourth, In the Warm Light, (2009) received the Natan Yonatan Prize. In 2006 he was awarded the Israel Prime Minister's Prize for Literature, and in 2011, the Hebrew University Dolitsky Prize – a cash award and the position of poet-in-residence. He has participated in the Mediterranean Voices Poetry Festival in Lodève, France, and the Jerusalem International Poetry Festival.

Shternberg holds an MA (in English and comparative literature) and a BA (in comparative literature) from the Hebrew University and is a graduate of the Helicon writing workshops. A founding member of the Katovet group, which operates the Poetry Place in Jerusalem, Shternberg is married to a poet and is the father of two girls.

Bibliography

Poetry

Beit (Home),Tel Aviv, Gvanim, 1999
Haroshat Hayom (A Day’s Labour), Tel Aviv, Helicon, 2001
Hadaf who mishoor (The Page is a Landscape), Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2004
Be-or haham (In the Warm Light), Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008
Teksay Haerev (Evening Rituals), Tel Aviv, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2012

Links

Israeli and Irish poetry: a discussion in Hebrew with the poet

LA CUCHARA HUECA: A poem in Spanish translation

Sponsored by POETRY PLACE

Poems

EAR LEAVING POETRY MANY WATERS 42 KATZENELSON STREET DUBLIN SHE ENTERS ON TIPTOE MY DAUGHTER, IN THE BACK OF THE CAR THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE

Poems

Poems of Lyor Shternberg

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Lyor Shternberg

Lyor Shternberg

Poems

EAR

LEAVING POETRY

MANY WATERS

42 KATZENELSON STREET

DUBLIN

SHE ENTERS ON TIPTOE

MY DAUGHTER, IN THE BACK OF THE CAR

THE PAGE IS A LANDSCAPE

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