Translator's Note

Compared to the tempestuous, spirit-drunk prophets of the Bible, Eli Eliahu is stone sober. Born in Tel Aviv in 1969, he is an editor at Israeli’s longest running daily newspaper,  Ha’aretz; he is a father, and, like nearly all Jewish Israelis, he was once a soldier. He is a secular man whose poetry is deeply engaged in Biblical narratives—indeed, his poetry engages in all of aspects of his own life in conversation with Biblical narratives, especially those featuring the scribes and prophets.  Eliahu’s poetry befits the son of two Iraqi immigrants who descend from one of the most historically significant communities in the Jewish world. For Babylon (in modern-day Iraq) plays an oversized role in producing the scribes and prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Ezra—as well as the material of prophecy itself.

Eliahu’s poems are simple in structure, arranged around a single message, and they are exquisitely crafted, with sleek parts of speech, and lines so beautifully aligned that reading these poems aloud is like moving a finger over the lip of a crystal glass—the air will echo for a few minutes after the words leave the mouth. For his three collections, I, and Not an Angel (2008), City and Fears (2011), and Epistles to the Children (2018), Eliahu has been awarded one of the first Matanel Prizes for Young Jewish Writers (2013), the Levi Eshkol Prime Minister’s Poetry Prize (2014) and an honorable mention for the first Dr. Gardner Prize for Hebrew Poetry, established by the First Lady of Israel, Nechama Rivlin in 2018.

Marcela Sulak

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