Efrat Mishori (''née'' Tsdaka, in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: אפרת מישורי; born 5 May 1964) is an Israeli poet,

essayist An essay ( ) is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a Letter (message), letter, a term paper, paper, an article (publishing), article, a pamphlet, and a s ...

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

ist, and filmmaker. She is the recipient of the Prime Minister's Award (2002) and the Landau Award (2018).

Biography

Mishori (nee Tsdaka) was born in

Tiberias Tiberias ( ; , ; ) is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Heb ...

. During the 1990s, she worked as an art and literature critic and essayist. She completed her PhD in literature at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

in 2006, with a dissertation entitled "Tel Aviv – Reality or Invention", which combined

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

and literature, and dealt with representation of places as transition objects for the poet; her work won her the Dov Sadan excellence award.

Writing

Mishori's first published work was a children's book, ''The Book of Dreams'', which came out in 1988. Mishori wrote and illustrated the book. Her first collection of poetry, ''Poems 1990–1994'', was self-published in 1994, won the Ron Adler Foundation award for first-time authors, and was defined by critic

Menahem Ben Menahem Ben (; October 31, 1948 – March 13, 2020) was an Israelis, Israeli poet and journalist and an outspoken literary and culture critic. He was a frequent op-ed contributor and authored two weekly columns, on culture and literature, in th ...

as "one of the most important poetic achievements we've seen in recent years". Since then, Mishori has published six additional poetry collections. She has won the Hebrew Authors Creativity Award (Prime Minister's Award) in 2002, the

Haaretz ''Haaretz'' (; originally ''Ḥadshot Haaretz'' – , , ) is an List of newspapers in Israel, Israeli newspaper. It was founded in 1918, making it the longest running newspaper currently in print in Israel. The paper is published in Hebrew lan ...

short story award in 2004, and in 2017, she won the Shlomo Tanai award for her book ''Married Woman and Single Poems''. Her poems and stories have been published in daily papers, magazines, and literary journals.

Other activities

In 1996, Mishori produced and performed the one-woman show "I Am Poetry's Model", based on her poems, and an early staging of

spoken word Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an oral tradition, ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetic ...

performing in Israel. The show was accompanied by

Video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. V ...

and movement, and was described in the press as "groundbreaking" and "pioneering". Mishori taught writing and performance at the School of Visual Arts in

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, led workshops at universities, and was Visiting Author for the

Ministry of Education An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...

. She also edits poetry collections, and is an editorial board member for the literature journal NanoPoetica. In 2011, Mishori started the literary salon "Theater of the Traveling Text", through which she leads workshops and meetings with women poets, authors and lecturers. She is considered a leader of the "neo-avant-garde" poetry movement in Israel. Together with the literature and culture magazine '' Iton 77'', Mishori founded "Low Flame 77", a publishing house dedicated to women's poetry, and defined by Mishori as "a laboratory for developing women's poetry". Two books have been published to date, by the poets Tal Cohen Bechor and Revital Mitki. In 2014, Mishori founded a

film production Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...

company with filmmaker Dana Goldberg, Gypsycam, for

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...

and independent cinema. They produced several

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

s together. In 2018, they released the feature film '' Death of a Poetess'', starring Evgenia Dodina and Samira Saraya. In 2018, Mishori received the Landau Arts Award.

Personal life

In 1989 she married Israeli artist Yakov Mishori, whom she divorced in 2014. The two have one son. Mishori and Dana Goldberg used to be a couple, but separated in 2017. Mishori lives in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

Select works

Poetry

* שירים 1990–1994 ''Poems 1990–1994'' * כרך א: יש לָנוּמָשוּ לָגִיד – שירים 1990–1992 ;כרך ב: הנפש האוקלידית – שירים 92–94 * נשיכות של דגים קטנים ''Bites of Little Fishes'', Even Hoshen, 1999 * הפה הפיזי: שירים ''The Physical Here'', Kibbutz Meuchad Publishing, 2002 * הבוהמה הביתית, הוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד, 79 עמ ''Home Boheme'', Kibbutz Meuchad Publishing, 2013 * ''Thinkerbell'', Kibbutz Meuchad Publishing, 2015 * אשה נשואה ושירים בודדים, הוצאת הקיבוץ המאוחד, 2019 ''Married Woman and Single Poems'', Kibbutz Meuchad Publishing, 2019 * Избавительница от смерти и изготовители сэндвичей / No nāves glābējiņa un sendviču meistari, Ozolnieki (Latvia), Literature without borders, 2022 (in Russian and Latvian translation)

Children's books

* ספר החלומות (ירושלים: חורב, תשמ"ח 1988) ''Book of Dreams'', Horev, Jerusalem 1988 (as Efrat Tsdaka)

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mishori, Efrat 1964 births Living people People from Tiberias Tel Aviv University alumni Israeli women poets Israeli women film directors Israeli literary critics Israeli women literary critics Israeli performance artists Israeli bisexual women Israeli LGBTQ poets Israeli LGBTQ artists Israeli LGBTQ film directors Israeli bisexual writers Bisexual women artists Bisexual women writers Bisexual poets Recipients of Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew Literary Works 20th-century Israeli women writers 21st-century Israeli women writers 20th-century Israeli women artists 21st-century Israeli women artists 20th-century Israeli LGBTQ people 21st-century Israeli LGBTQ people