Meir Wieseltier

Meir Wieseltier מאיר ויזלטיר, (born 1941) is a prize-winning Israeli poet and translator.

Biography

Meir Wieseltier was born in Moscow in 1941, shortly before the German invasion of Russia. He was taken to Novosibirsk in southwestern Siberia by his mother and two older sisters. His father was killed while serving in the Red Army in Leningrad. After two years in Poland, Germany and France, the family immigrated to Israel. Wieseltier grew up in Netanya. In 1955, he moved to Tel Aviv, where he has lived ever since. He published his first poems at the age of eighteen. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the early 1960s, he joined a group known as the Tel Aviv Poets. He was co-founder and co-editor of the literary magazine Siman Kriya, and a poetry editor for the Am Oved publishing house.

Literary career

Wieseltier has published 13 volumes of verse. He has translated English, French and Russian poetry into Hebrew. His translations include four of Shakespeare's tragedies, as well as novels by Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster and Malcolm Lowry. Wieseltier is a nonconformist, employing ironic imagery and a sarcastic, despairing tone. He often writes in the first person, assuming the role of a moralist searching for values in the midst of chaos. Wieseltier has written powerful poems of social and political protest in Israel. His voice is alternately anarchic and involved, angry and caring, trenchant and lyric.

Wieseltier is a poet in residence at the University of Haifa.

Awards

Among the many awards received by Wieseltier are the following:

• In 1994, Wieseltier was the co-recipient (jointly with Hanoch Levin) of the Bialik Prize for literature.
• In 2000, he received the Israel Prize, for literature and poetry.