Amir Or, born in Tel Aviv in 1956, is the author of nine volumes of poetry. His latest books in Hebrew are the fictional epic The Song of Tahira (2001), The Museum of Time (2007) and Heart Beast (2010). His poems, translated into more than forty languages, have appeared in anthologies, poetry journals, as well as in ten books in Europe and the U.S. Among them, and most recently, are Poem and Day (both published by Dedalus, U.K., in 2004, and 2006, respectively); Plates from the Museum of Time (ArtAark, U.S., 2009); and the Spanish-English Miracle/The Hours (Urpi Editores, U.S., 2011).
Amir Or is the recipient of Israeli and international poetry awards, including the 2000 Pleiades Tribute (Macedonia) for having made “a significant contribution to modern world poetry.” He has won the Bernstein Prize, the Fulbright Award for Writers, the Levi Eshkol Prime Minister’s Poetry Prize, as well as the Oeneumi literary prize of the Tetovo International Poetry Festival (2010) among others. He was also awarded several poetry fellowships, among them fellowships from Iowa University; the Centre of Jewish-Hebrew Studies at the University of Oxford; the Literarische Colloquium, Berlin; the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Ireland; and from the Hawthornden Castle, Scotland.
Or translated into Hebrew eight prose and poetry books, among them The Gospel of Thomas; Stories from the Mahabharata; and Limb Loosening Desire, an anthology of erotic Greek poetry. For his translations from ancient Greek he was awarded the Culture Minister Prize.
In 1990 Or co-founded Helicon Poetry Society and later on served as Helicon’s Chief Editor and Artistic Director. He initiated and developed its various projects, including Helicon’s poetry journal and its series of poetry books; the Sha’ar” International Poetry Festival; and the Helicon Hebrew-Arabic Poetry School.
Currently, Or serves as a national editor of Atlas international poetry magazine, and as a national coordinator for the U.N. sponsored UPC venture, “Poets for Peace.” He is a founding member of the ENCWP (European Network of Creative Writing Programs) of the international Cirlcle of Poets and of the WPM (World Poetry Movement).
