Yvonne Green
Current City, State, Country
Birth City, State, Country
Biography
Yvonne Green is a poet descended from Boukharian Jews. Her pamphlet, Boukhara (2007), won The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition. She has published four full-length collections with Smith|Doorstop, including; The Assay, Honoured and Jam & Jerusalem. Her volume After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin was a UK Poetry Book Society Translation Choice in 2011. Two new books were published in 2023 of translations of the work of Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin, Testimony and A Close Reading of Fifty-three Poems. Her work has been translated into Hebrew by Tal Nitzan and published by Am Oved, and her poems have been read out in the Israeli Knesset.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
My family were expelled from Egypt in 1956 and many of my poems express that sense of connection to and disconnection from the culture, music, cuisine, manners of a not-so-distant past that often creates a sense of both longing and alienation in children of the diaspora. My poems talk about holidays festivals, tradition, food; but also war, hatred and intolerance against Jews, both here in the UK and the Middle East. My translations of the poetry and memoirs of revered Soviet-Ukrainian poet Semyon Lipkin also highlight the Judeo-Christian metaphors at the core of his work.
Published Works
A Close Reading of Fifty-three Poems Selected by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Hendon Press, 2023)
Testimony from the Literary Memoirs of Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (Hendon Press, 2023)
Jam & Jerusalem (Smith|Doorstop, 2018)
Honoured (Smith|Doorstop, 2015)
Selected Poems & Translations (Smith|Doorstop, 2014)
After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (Smith|Doorstop, 2011)
The Assay (Smith|Doorstop, 2010)
Boukhara (pamphlet; Smith|Doorstop, 2007)