Ayelet Amittay
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner/ Wild Geese Mental Health
Biography
Ayelet Amittay is a poet and psychiatric nurse practitioner. Her forthcoming first book, The Eating Knife, explores and interprets the story of the Akedah through the lens of personal and familial trauma and resilience. Her poems appear most recently in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Rattle, Tupelo Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and others. She has received fellowships from the Yiddish Book Center and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She is excited to be part of the Yetzirah community.
What is the relationship between Judaism and/or Jewish culture and your poetry?
Midrash and textual interpretation play an important role in how I approach writing poems. When I read a story or a text, I am looking for places where the language is ambiguous or unclear, where I am invited to fill in the gaps with my own understanding or image. I believe studying Torah in elementary school is where I learned how to do this kind of listening for gaps. Often the Biblical stories are not linear, they repeat or skip, there are conversations that are one sided or broken. What happens in those spaces, or in the line breaks of a poem, or in the silence? In both my poetry and professional work, I pay careful attention to what is unsayable or what is not being said.
Published Works
The Eating Knife (Fernwood Press, 2025)
Links to Sample Works
Gulf Coast, “MMMBop Was Released”
Bellingham Review, “Exhibit C: Isaac”
Tupelo Quarterly, “Minor God”
