Poetry in the 21st Century and Radical Faith

Paideuma (The National Poetry Foundation)
OCTOBER 2019

The story is well-known: on a forced march from a labor camp in eastern Serbia toward northwest Hungary in October 1944, Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti continues to jot down poems in a small exercise book he carries with him.

"This Bequest of Wings": On Teaching Poetry in a Region of Conflict

The Stronach Memorial
Lecture on the Teaching of Poetry

MAY 2016

Rachel Tzvia Back delivers the Twelfth Judith Lee Stronach Memorial Lecture at the University of Berkeley in California. Her address considers the usefulness of poetry as a bridging element in a classroom of students divided by the conflict of their region. Chana Bloch introduces Rachel.

"A Species of Magic": The Role of Poetry in Protest and Truth-telling

World Literature Today
MAY-AUGUST 2014

Israeli poetry of protest is a relatively new phenomenon, even as it emanates from an ancient Jewish tradition of debate and dissent. Rachel Tzvia Back considers the power of poetry in general, and in her region specifically, to protest and speak difficult truths in the face of ongoing conflict and lies.

rachel.t.back@gmail.com