Cover reveal of my novel COME BACK FOR ME

COME BACK FOR ME: A NOVEL chosen as inaugural fiction offering by The New Jewish Press

I'm delighted to share the news that my novel Come Back for Me has been accepted for publication by The New Jewish Press. The New Jewish Press is an exciting new publishing venture run by the well-known publisher Malcolm Lester, former head of one of Canada's most distinguished publishing houses, Lester & Orpen Dennys. He and Andrea Fochs Knight of the prestigious Azrieli Foundation have teamed up to form the New Jewish Press, an arm of the University of Toronto's Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies.

I'm thrilled that my debut novel has been chosen as their inaugural fiction offering, and will appear in print in 2017!

Announcing my forthcoming book.

I am delighted to announce that my new book, Bridging the Divide: The Selected Poems of Hava Pinhas-Cohen, Translated and Introduced by Sharon Hart-Green will be forthcoming from Syracuse University Press in 2015. It will be the first book of poems in English by the prize-winning Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen, featuring approximately 100 poems in a bi-lingual edition. Stay tuned for its upcoming release!

Revisions have their own rewards

My debut novel, Come Back for Me, has recently gone through revisions, but I have to admit, it's still not quite ready to be sent off to agents/publishers. What a ride it has been! Though writers are naturally wedded to their prose, I must admit that making these changes has been (dare I say it?) --exhilarating. It proved to me that I can make changes and not lose the essence of my work. It also tells me that my work is not sacrosanct; it can be altered and yes, improved.  And those changes can take it in directions that are entirely unanticipated. It’s like turning the corner of a familiar street and discovering an entirely new neighborhood. It can be frightening to veer away from the familiar. But that is what writing fiction is all about: opening oneself to unexpected paths and honing the experience so that it speaks to those beyond oneself.

Having lived in Boston for several years, I was moved to write a poem in response to the terrible events of April 15.


Ode to Boston

The city will not die
By fire
Or smoke
Or bursting nails.
A gun is shot
Your mark is set
The race goes on
To reach
The bell upon the hill.

The torch will pass
From hand to hand
Through missing arms
And legs
And wind.
Their necks are hard
Their eyes are wide
Not daunted by the
Pointed shards dispersed along
The bloody trail
They run for freedom.

Sharon Hart-Green, April 15, 2013

The Weight of Emptiness: a poem by Hava Pinhas-Cohen

The following poem is the third in a series of 3 poems by the Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen that I translated and published recently in The Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought: http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt/


The Weight of Emptiness

Hava Pinchas-Cohen

1.
Lord, the whole weight of emptiness
You placed on my shoulders. The whole weight of emptiness
Bends my back
Pulls my neck
To follow you.

2.
The power of your touch that hovers
Over my neck and earlobes
The power of longing
To make you present for me

In my lying down and my rising up
And especially
My going out. My going out in the morning
On my journey where a shadow of a white dog
Whose simple desires are before me—

And you are with me. To you I tell
My wishes, I hear my voice
Fill the emptiness with words.
And you inhabit the chambers of my body, my throat, my guts,
Every place that is open and hollow is yours.
Cleaving to your silence. No voice, no word on the phone,
No letter, no touch. No human thing I can claim.
I went out to declare it in the streets
Gathering signs for my children to find their way through this cold and empty place.

Translated by Sharon Green

Request: a poem by Hava Pinhas-Cohen

The following poem is the second in a series of 3 poems by the Israeli poet Hava Pinhas-Cohen that I translated and published recently in The Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought: http://cjs.utoronto.ca/tjjt/



Request

Hava Pinhas-Cohen


When a baby is in my arms
Its life woven with human milk
At nights there come heartbeats, thumping voices
Trains—

At a certain station in that land
Barefoot and weak
I spread my arms
Like the horns of a ram in a thicket
The earth whispering to the heavens
Hear, make a canopy of your mercy
Like shade for the vine and the fig tree
Please, do not put me to the test.

There is wood and thicket, a smell of fire
And the sight of smoke. Don’t play hide-and-seek
With mothers—

Weakly I cover my eyes
My voice is lost in a scream
That can’t be heard
Where are you

Translated by Sharon Green