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WRITE ME: Commemorative Poetry Event In Observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day

  • April 07, 2019 6:51 PM
    Message # 7264688

    Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale will host a poetry reading and film screening in observance of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) on Wednesday, May 1, at 6:30 p.m. A pre-event reception will be held in the Museum, followed by the program commencing at 7 p.m. in the Winter Garden on the main floor of the Jacob Reingold Pavilion located at 5901 Palisade Avenue, in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. This event is free and open to the public. Please R.S.V.P. to 718.581.1596 or art@hebrewhome.org. Photo I.D. required for entrance.

    The event will feature special guest poet and actor Géza Röhrig, star of Son of Saul (2015) and To Dust (2018), and 10 additional poets, who will read their own work and other Holocaust poetry, including by Paul Celan and Miklós Radnóti. In addition to Mr. Röhrig, participating poets include Stanley H. Barkan, Pinny Bulman, Deborah Kahan Kolb, Janet R. Kirchheimer, Don Krieger, Nina Kossman, Alyssa A. Lappen, Mindy Rinkewich, Sarah Stern and Alan Walowitz.

    The evening will feature a special preview screening of the short film Write Me, directed by filmmaker Pearl Gluck and adapted from the poem "After Auschwitz" by Ms. Kolb. "Poets and writers have unique powers to bear witness," said Ms. Kolb, "and the memorialization of the Holocaust is ever more urgent in the wake of the tragic events in Pittsburgh and Charlottesville, and because of the rapidly dwindling number of survivors.”

    Write Me follows an older woman, played by actress Lynn Cohen, who joins other survivors in reclaiming the histories tattooed on their bodies. Ms. Cohen is known for such films as Munich (2005), in which she played Golda Meir, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) and the HBO series and films Sex and the City (2008, 2010). Ms. Gluck’s films, which explore themes of class, gender and faith, have appeared as part of the Sundance Lab as well as at the Cannes Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival and on PBS.

    This program is organized by Deborah Kahan Kolb and is supported in part by the Bronx Council on the Arts/BRIO Award.

    About the Participating Poets

    Stanley H. Barkan is the editor/publisher of Cross-Cultural Communications, a small press started as an Institute at LIU’s Brooklyn Center in 1971. It has produced some 450 book titles and 500 broadsides in 59 languages. His own work has been translated into 28 languages and published in 20 collections, several of them bilingual. His latest books include: More Mishpocheh (2018) and Wiersze wybrane [Selected Poems], translated into Polish by Tomasz Marek Sobieraj. He was the 1991 NYC Poetry Teacher of the Year (awarded by Poets House and the Board of Education) and the 1996 winner of “The Best of the Small Presses” (awarded by the Small Press Center). In 2017, he was awarded the Homer European Medal of Poetry and Art.

    Pinny Bulman is a Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO award-winning poet. He is also the recipient of several ADR Poetry Awards and a finalist for the Raynes Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in a variety of literary publications, including Muddy River Poetry Review, Artemis, Pressenza International, Red Paint Hill, Poetica and Poetry Quarterly. Pinny is the proud grandson of four Holocaust survivors.

    Deborah Kahan Kolb is the author of Windows and a Looking Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and the recipient of numerous poetry prizes, most recently the 2018 BRIO Award from Bronx Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in PRISM, Shirim, Poetica, Voices Israel, New Verse News, Literary Mama, 3Elements Review, Poets Reading the News, Paddock Review, Tuck, Rise Up Review, Writers Resist, Mom Egg Review and Veils, Halos & Shackles, an international poetry anthology addressing the oppression and empowerment of women. deborahkahankolb.com

    Janet R. Kirchheimer, author of How to Spot One of Us (Clal, 2007), is currently producing After (forthcoming 2020), a documentary in which poets explore what it means to live and write after the Shoah, featuring the works of renowned, contemporary poets. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous print and online journals, including Atlanta Review, Limestone, Connecticut Review, Natural Bridge, and String Poet. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Janet received a Drisha Institute for Jewish Education Arts Fellowship and teaches creative writing.

    Don Krieger is a biomedical researcher living in Pittsburgh, PA. His poetry has appeared online at TuckMagazine.com, Uppagus Magazine, Vox Populi Sphere, The Jewish Literary Journal and others, and in print in Hanging Loose (1972), Neurology and in Persian Sugar in English Tea, Volumes I and III, in English and Farsi. donspoetrypage.com

    Moscow-born Nina Kossman is a painter, sculptor, bilingual writer, poet, translator of Russian poetry and playwright. She is the author of two books of poems in Russian as well as the translator of two volumes of Marina Tsvetaeva's poems. Her other books include Behind the Border (HarperCollins, 1994), a collection of stories about her Moscow childhood, Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths (Oxford University Press, 2001) and a novel. ninakossman.com

    Alyssa A. Lappen, a U.S.-based investigative journalist and award-winning poet, is the author of The Minstrel's Song (Cross-Cultural Communications, April 2015), launched during National Poetry Month by the Friends of the Brooklyn Heights Library. She has read and spoken at dozens of venues. Her poetry has appeared in dozens of collections and journals, including the renowned The Seventh Quarry: Swansea Poetry Magazine in Wales. She won the 2000 annual Ruah: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry chapbook award and received a Harvard Summer Poetry Prize and several honorable mentions. alyssaalappen.org

    Mindy Rinkewich was born in New York. She has been writing Yiddish and English poetry all her life. She went to local Yiddish schools and received her MA from Columbia University. She is the author of four books of poetry and a novella. She works as a legal interpreter.

    Géza Röhrig was born in Budapest. At fifteen he founded an underground punk band, Huck®ebelly. He studied Polish Literature in Warsaw and has an MA in directing from the Budapest University of Drama and Film. He has starred in both Hungarian and Polish films. In 2015 Röhrig starred in the Hungarian Auschwitz movie Son of Saul that went on to win the Grand Prix in Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2018 he starred in To Dust, the winner of the Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award and Best First Narrative Feature. He currently has multiple films in post-production. Röhrig has published eight volumes of poetry and one short story collection in Hungarian, German and Polish. He lives in New York with his wife and children.

    Sarah Stern is the author of We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune (Kelsay Books, Aldrich Press, 2018), But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock, 2014) and Another Word for Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011). “The Interview” appeared in her latest book and was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize. She is a five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO Poetry Award. sarahstern.me

    Alan Walowitz has been published in various places on the web and off.  He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2018 and is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love (Osedax Press, 2016) is in its second printing. His full-length book of poems, tentatively titled The Story of the Milkman and other poems is forthcoming in 2019 from Truth Serum Press. alanwalowitz.com

    About the Filmmaker and Actress

    Pearl Gluck was awarded a Sundance Producing Lab fellowship for Divan (2004), her first documentary film, which was developed on a Fulbright grant to Hungary. Divan was broadcast on the Sundance Channel, theatrically premiered at the Film Forum in New York and played at festivals worldwide. Her short, Where Is Joel Baum (2012), starring Lynn Cohen won various awards at festivals, including the Denver Film Festival. Her first fiction feature, The Turn Out (2018), exploring sex trafficking at truck stops, won Best Debut Feature at Toronto‘s Female Eye Film Festival, among other awards. Her short film, Junior (2017), won three Best Actress awards for Elle Jae Stewart, and her award-winning short, Summer (2018), is about to be released by Film Movement. Her earlier work includes a television documentary Soundwalk: Williamsburg (2007), which won an Audie Award, a short film that she co-wrote, Goyta (2007), which premiered at Cannes, and Great Balls of Fire (2001), which screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.  Gluck has been interviewed about her work on NPR, WBAI and other outlets internationally. She appeared in A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (1998). Gluck teaches screenwriting and directing at Penn State University. palinkapictures.com

    Lynn Cohen is an actress best known for playing Golda Meir in Steven Spielberg’s Munich. She has also appeared as Magda in the HBO series Sex and the City and in the 2008 film of the same name, as well as its 2010 sequel, and Mags in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. She has also played Judge Elizabeth Mizener several times on Law & Order and has appeared in the movies Vanya on 42nd StreetSynecdoche, New York, and Eagle Eye. Write Me is Lynn Cohen’s third collaboration with Pearl Gluck.

    High Resolution Images Available Upon Request.

    About Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale

    As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provides educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere. RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 12,000 older adults in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Call 718.581.1596 for holiday hours and to schedule group tours, or for further information, visit our website at RiverSpringHealth.org/art


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