Scienceדליה רביקוביץ

Dahlia Ravikovitch

Dahlia Ravikovitch was an Israeli poet and translator who received the Israel Prize for Poetry in 1998.

1936 to 2005The poem Clockwork DollHebrew poetry translated into many languagesPolitical poetry and peace activism

Born: 17 November 1936, Ramat Gan
Died: 21 August 2005, Tel Aviv
Occupation: linguist, poet, translator, peace activist
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Hugim High School

Dahlia Ravikovitch was born in 1936 in Ramat Gan

Ravikovitch was born in 1936. Her father Levi was an engineer who came to the Land of Israel from China, and her mother Michal was a teacher. When she was six, her father was killed by a car, and the family moved to Kibbutz Geva.

At 13 she moved to foster homes in Haifa, where she wrote her first poem. She later studied language, English and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem but did not finish her degree. In 1972 she received a grant to study literature at Oxford.

Her first poems appeared in Avraham Shlonsky's journal Orlogin, and her first book, The Love of an Orange, came out in 1959. She published 10 volumes of poetry, short stories and children's books, and translated Yeats, Eliot and Poe into Hebrew. She also worked as a journalist and a high school teacher.

After the 1982 Lebanon War she began writing political poetry and was active in the peace movement. She had one son, Ido, born in 1978. She was found dead in her Tel Aviv apartment in 2005, and the autopsy pointed to a heart problem.