Tel Aviv Diary - June 9-13 2013 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
June 9, 2013
June 10, 2013
It was like an Ionesco play - I kept bringing out more and more chairs until I finally ran out and had to stand in the back. There was no room, and everyone was hanging on to every word of Riva Rubin, giving her more and more strength to go on reading. No, it was a dream. If nothing else happens all month, this will suffice. But other things will be happening. Oren's wedding is the big big event. the small things are a trip tomorrow to Maghrar to participate in the poetry festival...and, well, you'll see.
June 11, 2013 Don't tell anyone but the festival in Maghrar is my favorite. With all the mismanagement and the lack of funding this year, there is still something very homey about Maghrar and its poetry festival. I hope next year I'll be able to help a bit more with translations. But I am not a very serious participant. The village children sitting behind me were more interesting to me than the poets and I gave them my camera to take pictures, for example. Then at the end, a Gazan poet - who must have known I was Israeli - wanted a picture with me because I am tall and he is tall. A very cool looking Sudanese type - and a great person to play with (he called me a little terrorist because I stood on my tip-toes in order to look much taller in the photo) but I never got a chance to hear his work. (That's because I came only on the last evening of the festival - I missed Naim Araidi too.)
We got home at 2 in the morning and now, at 9, we have been in the hospital for 2 hours already, getting Ezi's preventive treatment. It is going to be a long day. June 13, 2013
I have a grandchild who reads the newspaper and whenever I'm around seems to find stories to read aloud about children - endangered or killed. The announcements from the UN today about almost 2000 children under 10 who have been killed since the uprisings must have really hit hard. It's too late to call casually and ask him. I wonder too if the state of the Bedouin in the Negev also bothers him - if the strike today that kept all the Bedouin children at home today in protest of the government policies are also in the news for him.
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Beneath is the tentative poster of the conference on June 27. And here's a sample of what I write: Poem of the Week in Haaretz
