Hamutal Bar-Yosef is a poet, translator and literature researcher

Hamutal Bar-Yosef was born on 1940  in Israel, in a kibbutz near the  Sea of Galilee. Her parents left the Kibbutz after the War of Independence, in which they lost their only son. At 20 she got her B. A. in Philosophy and Hebrew literature and at the same age she was married to the playwright Yosef Bar-Yosef. At 29 she was a mother of four children. At 33 she did her second degree in Comparative literature, and at 44 – she  got a Ph.D. degree at the Hebrew University. During 1987 - 2003 she was teaching at the Department of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva. She lives in Jerusalem since 1976.

She writes poetry since the age of eight, expressing the trauma of bereavement and the miracle of inner survival.  Since 1971 She published  9 collections of poetry, as well as short stories, a book for children, and two collections of poetry translated  from Russian: Olga Sedakova’s  (1998) and Yulia Viner’s (2003). She won the Akum Prize (1978) , The Tel-Aviv Prize (1984) The Jerusalem Prize for poetry (1997), the WIZO Prize for the Creative Woman (1999), the President of Israel Prize for poetry (2002), and the Brenner Prize for poetry (2005). Her poems were translated into English, French, German, Russian, Ukraine, Arabic and Yiddish.

She also published 6 books of literary research, among which are Trends of Decadence in Modern Hebrew Literature  (Jerusalem 1997) and Symbolism in Modern Poetry (2000). She edited an anthology of Hebrew literature in Russian translations (RSUH, 2000). She taught as a visiting Professor in the Istitute of Oriental Languages (Paris), Columbia University (New York), and The University of Humanities (RSUH), Moscow.  During fall 2002 she was a Fellow in the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at Penn University, Philadelphia. Her main  fields   of   literary  research are the Russian context of Jewish literature and culture, and mysticism in modern Hebrew poetry.

Contact Hamutal Bar-Yosef by e-mail:  baryosef@bgumail.bgu.ac.il