Amir Or

Amir Or, a writer, translator, teacher and editor born on July 1, 1956 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He completed the master degree in Comparative religion studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

@Andjelko Vasiljevic

As an author of eleven poetry books, two novels and eleven translations into Hebrew, he has given readings and lectures worldwide, and taught creative writing in Israel, USA, Czech Republic, Austria, UK and Japan.

He debuted in 1987 with I Look Through The Monkeys´ Eyes (Ani Mabbid Me´einei Haqqofim).

His fictional epic novel The Song of Tahira (Shir Tahira) was published 2001 and a novel The Kingdom (Hammamlacha) in 2015. From the range of collections of poems let´s mention So! (Kacha), Day (Yom), Loot (Shalal), selected poems 1977–2013, or so far the last Wings (Knafayim).

He translates the wide range of works into Hebrew, eg. Stories From The Mahabharata (Sippurim min Ha-Mahabharata), To a Woman by Shuntaro Tanikawa (Le'isha) or When the Salamanders Sing by Aurelia Lassaque (Shirat Hassalamandra).

He founded Helicon Poetry (in 1990) and the Arabic-Hebrew Helicon Poetry School (in 1993). Helicon is a poetry journal, a poetry press, a training centre for young poets, a producer of poetry performances, an initiator of interactive ventures between poetry and the other arts, a promoter of communication and sharing among poets writing in the various languages of Israel – Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and more – and an importer of poetry from the world into Israel and an exporter of Israeli poetry to the world. Amir Or is active also in the editorial work – as an editor of Helicon´s journal and poetry books, and a national coordinator for the U.N. “Poets for Peace”.

Amir Or has been awarded national Israeli awards such as Bernstein Award, Prime Minister´s Prize for Writers, Culture Minister´s Honorary Translation Prize as well as international awards such as the Pleiades tribute, Struga (2000), Fulbright Award for Writers, Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša´ International Award, or World Through Poetry Award from Montreal.

During his residency stay in Prague, he was writing his 12th poetry book The Cricket. Amir Or describes: „The poetics of The Cricket will be an attempt at the undoing of post-modern procedures through claiming a return of immanent significance to the signifier. However, despite the somewhat ambitious philosophical objective of the project, I plan to develop the actual poetry of The Cricket through simple playful parables and poetic dialogues. The overall narrative will start with personal and existential parable-poems dealing with the human condition and will proceed along this line into social, ethical and historical issues.“

“A city like Prague, rich with tales from the Libushe legend to the Golem story, with dramatic historical memories and inspiring theatres, museums, concert halls, galleries and music clubs would be the ideal location for writing The Cricket,“ reveals Amir Or.

As part of Prague residency, you could also meet Amir Or personally during the World Book festival (Svět knihy) in Plzeň in September or at the reading in Prague during September and October.

Author reading