As Open As the Sky...

Shoshana is a multidisciplinary artist, American-born, based in Jerusalem. Creator of Poets of Babel, a multilingual poetry club, she explores hybrid identity and ideas of home through poetry, lyric essay, spoken word performances, and collages. She belly dances, teaches writing, and has recently completed The Shaindy Rudoff Creative Writing Graduate Program in Creative Writing.

A lover of languages, she speaks Hebrew, French, and Russian, and has studied Spanish, Korean and Arabic just for kicks ( but the truth is she can’t remember the last three languages save a few phrases). She established  Poets of Babel as a sneaky way to combine her two greatest loves: languages and poetry.

She holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but for some illogical reason decided to go back to school. She told everyone that she’d get a teaching certificate in theater (because she’s also into improv), but then ended up studying poetry. She’ll properly study psychodrama, script writing, directing and photography and mix it all up like the mosaic/collage/Babel that she is. Her love of basket weaving just makes sense (mosaics and loom weaving are next).

Her works appear in The Ilanot Review,  Yes Poetry,מרחבالفضاء  Space, Entropy, Duende, Arc, Mixed Race 3.0, Mom Egg Review, Bakol Ram (בקל רם) the Poetry Slam Israel anthology, and Therefore for Thee: celebrating Walt Whitman in Israel. She also has interviews on TLV1’s “Let’s Get Lit” “Babbling towards Baghdad”  and on ICD International Radio’s “Mosaic.”

She directed a documentary about stereotypes in Israel (“Stranger/ כי גר היית”) and has six poetry journals (that are in her treasure box) since she started writing in high school. She is obsessed with maps, clocks, compasses, lampposts, and the Tower of Babel while simultaneously having issues with time, directions, and a proud case of Jerusalem syndrome. She is currently back to playing the zills to Gnawa music, finally living out her fantasy of learning the cello, and has recently created PoeTee, the poet’s t-shirt.

See her publications , spoken word performances and videos from Poets of Babel events on her YouTube channel (ShoshanaSarahLJ).