Book Launch of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry

For centuries, poets have turned to translation for creative inspiration. Through and in translation, poets have introduced new poetic styles, languages, and forms into their own writing, sometimes changing the course of literary history in the process. Strange Cocktail is the first comprehensive study of this phenomenon in modern Hebrew literature of the late nineteenth century to the present day. Through close readings of four poets, whose work spans the twentieth century, Strange Cocktail advances a comparative and multilingual reframing of modern Hebrew literature that considers how canons change and are undone when translation occupies a central position-how lines of influence and affiliation are redrawn and literary historiographies are revised when the work of translation occupies the same status as an original text, when translating and writing go hand in hand.

Adriana X. Jacobs is Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the Faculty of Oriental Studies and co-covenor of OCCT. She has published widely on contemporary Hebrew and Israeli poetry and translation, including articles in Shofar, PMLA, Studies in American Jewish Literature, and Prooftexts, as well as chapters in several edited volumes. Her translations of the American Hebrew poet Annabelle Farmelant appeared in Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores: Poems by Anne Kleiman and Annabelle Farmelant (Wayne State UP, 2016). She is currently working on a new book project on poetry of crisis.