AMIR OR

1. R A S S O U L I AMIR OR Poems and I long for the one who sees me through touching, and I don’t remember a thing. Only this. Presentation designing by Mirrors Sarit Shatz Press for slides

2. AMIR OR, b. 1956, is the author of eight volumes of poetry and a fictional epic in metered prose. His latest book The Museum of Time was written in Both Hebrew and English. Or's poems have been published in more than 30 languages, including four books in English translation. For his poetry he has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize, the Bernstein Prize and the Fulbright Award; as well as Fellowships at the University of Iowa the Jewish-Hebrew Centre of the University of Oxford, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Achill Island, among others. Amir Or is also a teacher, translator, and editor. He studied philosophy and Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he later lectured on Ancient Greek Religion. He has published articles on poetry, classic studies and religious studies, and has taught poetry and creative Writing In universities in Israel, the UK, and Japan. Or has published several books of translations into Hebrew, including The Gospel of Thomas (1992), Limb-Loosening Desire - An Anthology of Erotic Greek Poetry (1993), and Stories From The Mahabharata (1998). For his translations of poetry from Ancient Greek he received the Honorary Prize of the Israeli Minister of Culture. In 1990 Or founded“Helicon”, the Society for the Advancement of Poetry, and has been its Editor-in-Chief since then. In 1993 he set up the Arabic-Hebrew Helicon Poetry School. He initiated and edited the “Helicon journal” and its series of poetry books. He has founded and directed the Sha’ar International Poetry Festival. Or is a founding member of the European Network of Creative Writing Programs and the National Coordinator of the U.N.-sponsored Poets for Peace. I'm fixing what I can. Yes, it's going to hurt. Don't look, don't touchthe stitches; walk on in between the lines. There you'll find the right poem

3. Paul Wilkins LANGUAGE SAYS Language says: before language stands a language. Language is traces stained by over there. Language says: listen now. You listen: here was echo. Take silence and try to be silent. Take the words and try to speak: beyond language, language is a wound from which the world flows and flows. Language says: is, is not, is, is not. Language says: I. Language says: come on, let’s speak you, let’s handle you; come on, say you’ve said – From: LANGUAGE SAYS 2001 Translated by Fiona Sampson and the author Mary Titus

4. SOME SAY Some say life is continuing in the face of the alternative; some say - conquest; some stretch an equals sign between life and its absence; and some say that life was given us to serve those whose lives are not a life. I say: you. And this is easily explained: once again night envelops what can be seen. At home lamps are lit. And in the light there’s no glance except the one from the mirror, nothing except what sees me seeing it; and it brings not release but longing, not death but life. And I take from this gaze the warm and the cold – night envelops everything- and I long for the one who sees me through touching, and I don’t remember a thing. Only this. From POEM 2004 Translated by Helena Berg

5. El Amor Brujo How to say this? You’re too close to bear, you are fruit bursting in the heart, you are the name the dumb mouth bears like sea in the earth’s palm. I touch, and envy my touching hand; touching, I yearn to touch. Terror of this motionless moment:you are here inside here inside here. Here the soul-fire burns, burns. The heart unconsumed. From DAY 2006 Translated by Fiona Sampson and the author

6. Dryad She starts at dusk in the trees sunk deep into the essence of shadow their edges still half material as green as the heart. She's nesting within herself deep in its water her branches shadow arms taking roots in the dark. Twilight's already grey and so are the eyes. She sinks slowly her thighs water and cold black earth humus just a flickering glitter passing through leaves – eyes. Hunger. Your feet are sinking and opening your navel moist and cold your face rustling. Roots are branches groping for a face – Timoty Lantz From THE MUSEUM OF TIME 2007

7. ART This was the eighth day of creation: clouds absorbed burning brush-strokes across the bluish-grey width of the sky. Our souls struggled towards the fire like beautiful insects but the plane – was all forwards, drawing out its line. Indifferent to the heavenly cataclysm it passed far above. At dawn under lampshades of clouds the being-artist dipped his brush in thin light and peaceful autumn was silently drawn into the tops of the plane trees gradually matching them with patches of roof among waterfalls of Russian vine The air’s clean of thoughts; what can be seen - nameless, packed with dreams. Between patches of wandering worlds, the world’s slowly rising here and there, in my eyes. From DAY 2006

8. A GLASS OF BEER The perfect murder has no reasons, he said, the perfect murder needs only a perfect object, as it was in Auschwitz. Not the crematoria, of course, but as it was afterwards, outside working hours. And he fell silent looking at the froth on the beer and taking a sip. The perfect murder is love, he said. The perfect murder doesn’t require anything perfect except giving as much as you can. Even the memory of gripping the throat is eternal. Even the howls that rocked my hand, even the piss that fell like grace on cold flesh, even the heel of the boot awakens another eternity, even the silence, he said, looking at the froth. True, a decent arbeit macht frei, but a perfect murder doesn’t spill a drop, like the lips of a child, he explained, like sand and froth, like you, listening, sipping and listening From MIRACLE 1995 Translated by Theo Dorgan, Tony Curtis, McDara Woods

9. Sand and Time Touch this with your eye. Do you see it? Only a lonely crow is piercing the morning with his uncanny urgency. The trees are still deep with night enfolding dimensions in their foliage caves. My eyes take a morning walk, roam the half-light world where dream and wakefulness aren’t yet distinguished from shadows and leaves. A lazy sun’s rising in my lazy eyes a cool blue emerges from the east. I’m leaning against the sea at the back of my heart: to enter and be entered is all we do. From THE MUSEUM OF TIME 2007

10. Love Bed In the corner of the room – pleasure. A pink tongue lapping each drop of milk from the cat's veins. Fish swim the lower belly - it's painful for them but they know nothing about it nothing at all. The body's quiet now. It's all leftovers. The spirit breathinggently above it is left to its reflection. The mirror-bird is spreading, with difficulty, a single wing. From THE MUSEUM OF TIME 2007 Charnine

11. DROWNING, HE BREATHES LIVING WATER My Narcissus, in the end you got used to it. You sprouted gills on the sides of your neck and sliding down down sprawled among stems and water. And the echo became a wave and the reflection a place and you looked and looked and looked toward the skyline of water. And leapt out again to me. And the thunder returned to silence, the water to being a screen, the eye - to marble. You came back into me. And the echo became a voice and the reflection a face and you were released. Come sit down. From POEM 2004 Translated by Helena Berg

12. EPITAPH Leave the road here, wanderer, Sit down among mulberries and vines, Between water and shade, by this white stone, Here I lie, boy and Emperor. My face cold marble, my hands, my feet, Clothed with ivy and fallen leaves, I, too, failed to get far, I, too, once walked the earth. Leave the road here, wanderer, Crush these wild berries in my face From MIRACLE 1995 Translated by Theo Dorgan, Tony Curtis, McDara Woods

13. A CORRECTION for the sin of being spoiled with words and mistaking the call of Love; for turning away from myself like shadow from body, face from heart ; for the sin of ‘What will they say?’; for self denial; for pride; for the sin of having followed the spell of praise under the stage lights; for my ear that has abandoned listening, for the utterance of the mouth which I have spoken, yet my soul has not ; for sin I’ve committed against my own body with the rod and no kindness, beating my breast ; for calling Yours my own; for having sinned before You by anxiety and vain fear, for having fed the fire of doubt from the log of the tree of plenty; for having been dilatory in growing; for having shut my door and having neither heard nor seen nor let happiness enter me when beholding Your being. From DAY 2006 Translated from Hebrew by Fiona Sampson and the author

14. Amir Or - Books I Look Through The Monkeys’ Eyes Eqed Publishers, Tel Aviv 1987 Faces Am Oved Publishers, Tel Aviv 1991 Ransoming The DeadBitan Publishers, Tel Aviv 1994 So!Hakkibutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Tel Aviv 1995 Poem Hakkibutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Tel Aviv 1996 Day Hakkibutz Hameuchad / Tag publishers, Tel Aviv 1998 The Song of Tahira Hargol Publishers, Tel Aviv 2001 The Museum Of TimeEnglish / Hebrew Hakkibutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv Arc, Manchester2007 In translation Poetry is a Criminal GirlArabic, Faradis publishers, Paris 1995 MiracleEnglish/Hebrew, Poetry Ireland, Dublin 1998 Drowning, He Breathes Living WaterMacedonian, the Pleiades Series of the SPE International Festival, 2000 Language SaysEnglish, Poetry Miscellaneous, Chattanooga USA, 2001 PoemEnglish, Dedalus Press, Dublin 2004 DayEnglish, Dedalus Press, Dublin 2006 Let's Speak YouRomanian/Hebrew, Poem and selected, Vinea Press, Bucharest 2006 PoemPolish, Portret Publishers, Olsztyn 2006

15. AMIR OR ON THE WEB English http://israel.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/25662 http://www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/poetnewsJan01.html http://www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/poetnewsFeb01.html http://www.eurozine.com/article/1999-11-02-anthology4-en.html http://www.eurozine.com/article/1999-11-02-or-en.html http://www.traktor.cz/trafika/amiror.html http://www.newropeans-magazine.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1522&Itemid=88 http://www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/poetnewsFeb01.html http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/5/Hebrew%20Poetry%20in%20the%20New%20Millennium http://www.ithl.org.il/authors.html http://motherbird.com/AmirOr.html http://www.eurozine.com/article/1999-11-02-anthology4-en.html http://www.eurozine.com/partner/helicon/selfdescription.html http://www.artvilla.com/mair/ormenu.html http://www.e-mago.co.il/e-magazine/asotsosiiitlfy-eles.html http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0810/p11s02-legn.html

16. AMIR OR ON THE WEB Japanese http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend/2240/amirpoem.html http://www.geocities.co.jp/Bookend/2240/amir.home.html German http://www.neuesirene.de/12or.htm Macedonian http://www.blesok.com.mk/tekst.asp?lang=mac&tekst=193&str=5 Russian http://www.plexus.org.il/texts/or_comp.htm http://www.il4u.org.il/ariel/ariel29/poems.htm Slovak http://www.ssn.sk/ar/oramirtext.htm Greek http://www.enet.gr/online/online_text?c=113&id=32296632 Write to me: Amir Or Thank you for watching