The Voices Israel Group of Poets

in English

2020 Voices Anthology Launch


There is, it seems, a silver lining to every cloud.  We held the launch event of Volume 46, the 2020 Voices Israel Anthology, via Zoom on September 22nd, and it turned out to be our biggest event ever! Over 50 people registered for the event and 51 attended it, 38 of whom read poems from the Anthology.  Several of our overseas members joined us - from Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada - and read their poems; and only two members could not attend and requested proxy readers (one because she is in Australia, our meeting was held around 4 am her time).  And we were pleased to welcome two new members who joined Voices Israel right before the event!

This year's anthology was more than ever a great team effort. We warmly thanked its chief editor, Dina Yehuda, and "virtually" awarded her a small gift (in Real Life sent her by mail) in token of our appreciation for her huge efforts in both editing and helping to proof-read the anthology; heartfelt thanks also to the editorial team of David Fellerman, Edit Gavriely and Yehudit Goldfarb for the many hours they spent judging the entries; and to Susan Olsburgh, our past president, who devoted an enormous amount of time to the proof-reading right down to the final printer-proofs. And last but not least, to our Treasurer Chanita Millman, who not only handles the financial side of anthology orders but also mails the right number of copies to the right people, year after year - a tremendous job. Chanita, thank you!

Our anthology designer and producer, Johnmichael Simon, has announced that he is stepping down, to our regret, after many years in this role. Johnmichael, we can never thank you enough! We "virtually" awarded him a small honorarium which, while it cannot approach the value of all he has done for Voices Israel, will we hope assure him of our gratitude and esteem. 

We recorded most of the event on Zoom - both an audio-only recording and a video - and our secretary Linda is sending all our members a link to the uploaded files. The video is a huge file (1 GB) so if you wish to download it, be aware it will take a while! For the same reason - file size - we cannot upload it to the website. But below are a few screenshots from the video - it proved difficult or impossible to get a screenshot of people actually reading their poem, so they are all of the "general assembly", but they do give a slight feel of the event. 


Click on any of the screenshots below to view a magnified slideshow. For a larger selection of photos from all our events, check out the Photos section of our Facebook page.


We look forward to seeing everyone next year at the launch of the 2021 Anthology - when hopefully we will all have been vaccinated and back to real meetings!

More information about the annual Anthology and how to submit poems to it is detailed under Anthology from the main menu.