Can the art of writing poetry be taught? Many of us believe that it cannot be. Because writing poetry, we think, is a spontaneous act, like the blossoming of a tree. I, too, was under this impression until I met Amir Or, a well-known Hebrew poet who is the creative director of the Helicon Society for the Advancement of Poetry in Israel. That was last year — at a poetry festival in Tel Aviv.
Amir said Helicon was a training centre for young poets, a producer of poetry performances, an initiator of interactive ventures between poetry and the other arts. His theory: “No one has ever questioned the logic behind training a visual artist, an actor or a musician. Why then is the prejudice that poetry cannot be studied?”
It’s true that in any field, talent can’t be learned –– but as we know, there used to be schools for poetry — in ancient Greece, in the aiodoi tradition in Homeric Ionia, in Lesbos, or in Hellenistic Alexandria, in the various meistersinger, troubadour and other European traditions, through the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance period. Homer, Sappho or Callimachus stand in the tradition of a school, as do Kalidasa in India or Basho in Japan; in just the same way as there are schools for dance and fine arts today. Broadening a poet’s horizons, familiarising her or him with various styles and techniques of writing as well as with the writings of different cultures and eras, can only enrich their poetic “tool-box”.
The Helicon gives importance not only to providing a platform and professional
advancement for young poets but also in bringing the public closer to poetry. Cultural processes are long-term, and making a cultural impact takes a long time. The school started in 1993, and it has taken about eight years
before its extensive effect on Israeli culture could be seen. Since then, graduates of the poetry classes have published close to fifty books of poetry.
Since 2001, the Helicon has been offering the same programme to young poets who write in Arabic, with a view to facilitating mutual cultural, personal and poetic acquaintance between writers in Hebrew and in Arabic. The Hebrew-Arabic poetry classes, along with Helicon’s bilingual Sha’ar International Poetry Festival, which was originally for new poetry, and its two accompanying bilingual annual publications, seek to create a bridge between Jews and Arabs in Israel, to create a framework for a cultural dialogue among the most promising poets of the future generation, and to transmit the achievements of this collaborative activity to the general public. Such endeavours are vital to open each culture up to a better understanding of the heritage, philosophy and difficulties of the other, and thus contribute to mutual respect and enrichment. The Helicon’s aim is to make poetry a medium for peace.
In the present-day world in which many languages with rich cultural and literary traditions face the threat of extinction because of their inability to catch up with the demands of the globalised world, Hebrew provides a curious example of how an unspoken, semi-fossilised language could be revived. Certainly there are political as well as economic reasons for that. At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that the language of the scriptures hasn’t been spoken in everyday life for two millennia but went on being studied and used in prayer even by laymen in every Jewish community. Religious and secular Hebrew poetry have been composed throughout these generations all over the world. For centuries, Hebrew poetic tradition has been thus enriched by other traditions in style, theme, and lyrical forms. So, poets are the guardian spirits to watch over the sanctuary of a language. Or so believes Amir Or.
