David Avidan

David Avidan was born in 1934 in Tel Aviv

Avidan was born in Tel Aviv in 1934 as David Moritz. After his younger brother Nadiv was born, their father, a water engineer for the Tel Aviv municipality, changed the family name to Avidan. His mother's parents were killed in the Holocaust.

He attended the Shalva Gymnasium and studied literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1952 to 1954. Asthma affected him from a young age.

In 1952 he began publishing poems, mainly in the Communist daily Kol HaAm, and joined the Banki youth movement, which he left in 1953. His first book, Lipless Faucets, came out in 1954 and drew mostly negative reviews. He went on to write new words, translate plays, make films, paint and record his poems.

From the late 1960s he used new technology in his work, recording poems on a dictaphone. His 1974 book My Electronic Psychiatrist includes conversations with the computer program ELIZA.

By the early 1990s he struggled to make a living and his mental health declined. He received the Bialik Prize in 1993 and died in his Tel Aviv apartment in 1995.