Literatureמלכה לוקר

Malka Locker

Malka Locker was a poet who wrote mainly in Yiddish, and she was also a literary scholar and translator.

1887 to 1990Yiddish poetryStudies of French poetsBooks on Rimbaud and Baudelaire

Born: 22 November 1887, Kuty
Occupation: translator, literary theorist, poet, writer

Malka Locker was born in 1887 in Kuty

Malka Locker was born in 1887 in Kuty, a town in Galicia. Her family had a long line of rabbis. She received a traditional Jewish education and a general one, and she learned several languages.

In 1910 she married her cousin, the Zionist activist Berl Locker. His work in the Zionist movement took the couple to New York and to cities in Europe. They lived in London during World War II.

Her first Yiddish poems appeared in 1929, and her first book of poems came out in 1931. Later collections included a book titled Du in 1932 and a book about London in 1942. She also wrote studies of French poets, including Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Verlaine.

In 1948 the couple settled in Jerusalem. Berl Locker died in 1972. Malka Locker died in Jerusalem in 1990.