Hagit Grossman

Hagit Grossman
Born	(1976-09-26) September 26, 1976 Rishon LeZion, Israel
Occupation	Poet
Spouse	Yehonatan Dayan
Children	2

Hagit Grossman (Hebrew: חגית גרוסמן; born on September 26, 1976, in Rishon LeZion, Israel) is an Israeli poet and novelist.

Early life and education

Her first poem was published at the age of six in a school newspaper. When she was ten, her parents separated and her father raised her and her two sisters on his own. When she was fourteen, one of her poems was published in an anthology.

Grossman went to the Ness Ziona high school, studied photography at "Camera Obscura", theater at "Beit Zvi", painting at "Hamidrasha" Art College, and Hebrew and General Literature at Tel Aviv University. In 2006, she studied for a master's degree in Literary and Creative Writing at the Department of Hebrew Literature of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Literary career

Grossman teaches writing at "Musrara", a multidisciplinary art school in Jerusalem.

Grossman is one of the most prominent of the young generation's poets, her work has been published in various literary journals.

As of 2018, she had published four poetry books, three novels, and a collection of short stories.

Poetry

Her first book of poems is a kind of lament to her father, a sensitive journey with a description of the relationship and longing for him:

Let the light undress the shadow's secret from your thin arms.

Your blue eyes freezes by the flight of the great light

And I sit and stare into the dark, my neck wrapped

around your shadowed scarves.

("Let the Light" from Nine poems for Samuel)

In her second book of poems there are lamentations to her lover who committed suicide alongside Love poems to her current lover, and poems of childhood memories, relationships and anxiety:

At night, I saw you through a veil of darkness

And I dreamt I had a smile.

A warm sound passed through my body

And your love does not subside.

("Through a Veil" from Ash Whales)

Her poetry was published in France by "Levant", and in the UK by Shearsman Books.

Her poem "On Friendship", published in The New Yorker, participates in research at a hospital that examines the impact of writing and reading poetry on cancer patients.

Novels

In her first novel, Where they are Not, she manages to tread the fine boundaries between poetry and prose, and best describes a world where the occult and the visible are mutually intertwined. Her poems deal with the tension between foreignness and love, between death, absence and longing for the past and finding ways to revive it through poetry. At times it seems abstract and ambiguous, but its linguistic sensitivity and penetrating gaze create an expressive and rich expression that indicates virtuosic talent, without inhibition or formal restraint. Her poetry, wrote Erez Schweitzer (2010), is an event of passion and holiness, of vitality and of death, of danger but also of refuge.

Published books

Poetry

• Nine poems for Samuel (Plonit Publishing House, 2007)
• Ash Whales (Keshev Leshira, 2010)
• Trembling of the City (Keshev Leshira, 2013)
• The Book of the Body (Hakibutz Hameuhad, 2017),

Novels

• Where they are not (Yedioth Books, 2012)
• Laila and Lewis (Kineret Zmora Bitan, 2014).
• רוחות פרצים (lit. Bursting Winds; Kineret Zmora Bitan, 2018)

Collection of short stories

• To Revive Silent Things (Pardes Publishing, 2017)

Private life

Grossman lives in Tel Aviv. She is married to Yehonatan Dayan, a literature scholar, editor and translator. The couple has two daughters.

External links

• Poem for an Addict, poem from "Trembling of the City", translated by Benjamin Balint. Full text and comment as Drug Abuse and Alcohol Abuse Are Not Created Equal by Vivian Eden for Haaretz, "Poem of the Week", 29 July 2015. Accessed 2 October 2021.