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Natan Zach was born in Berlin in 1930 and is one of Israel’s most important contemporary poets. His poetry is full of allusions and ambiguities and characterised by understatement and ironic fractures. Many of his poems have been set to music and are part of today’s Israeli pop music.
Natan Zach played a crucial role in the modernisation od Israeli literature. He rejected traditional formalisation and broke with the conventions by combining conversational language with biblical and rabbinic Hebrew and joining the group Likrat (Against), which turned against the lyrical pathos of zionist poetry.
Zach has also brought Hebrew literature into the modern age by editing and translating poets such as Bertolt Brecht, Paul Celan, Else Lasker-Schüler and Allen Ginsberg. In 1967, together with the Palestinian poet Rashid Hussein, he translated Arabic folk songs.
Zach was born in Berlin to a German Jewish fatjer and an Italian mother. His family fled to Haifa when he was six years old. Today, after spending many years in England, he lives back in Israel.
Zach has received many awards and distinctions, including the Bialik Prize for Literature (1982) and the Israel Prize for Hebrew Poetry (1995). In 2002 he was named as the Ambassador of Cultural Rome in the World.
Publications (a selection):
Shirim Rishonim (First Poems) (Ha-masa 1955)
Shirim Shonim (Other Poems) (Alef 1960)
Bimkom Halom (A Dream Instead) (Massada Gallery 1966)
Anti-Mechikon (Anti-erasure) (Hakibbutz Hameuchad 1984)
Key Ha'adam Hoo Etz Hasadeh (For Man is a Tree of the Field) (Tammuz 1999)