2001
Scar Minimizer
Scar Minimizer
Poetry
Mati Shemoelof
Gwanim Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2001
Language: Hebrew
Scar Minimizer is Mati Shemoelof’s first poetry collection, published in 2001. The book introduced a young poet whose early work combined Beat-influenced rhythms, popular culture, urban experience and a growing political consciousness.
The poems move through Tel Aviv and its cultural landscape while already beginning to question the social hierarchies and identities that shape Israeli life. Western popular culture, Israeli music, literature and personal memory appear alongside an emerging Mizrahi perspective.
The collection marks the beginning of a poetic journey that would later develop into a sustained engagement with Mizrahi identity, political protest, migration and the relationship between Hebrew and other languages.
Reception
Moise Ben-Harosh described Shemoelof as a sensitive and distinctive poet in a review of the collection. Almog Behar later identified in the book a Beat- and American-influenced rhythm, references to Western and Israeli popular culture, and the beginnings of a distinctive poetic voice.
The book was also recognized as Shemoelof’s debut poetry collection and received the Best Debut Poetry Book award from the National Lottery’s cultural foundation. Poems from the book were subsequently published in numerous anthologies. The book received a creation grant from the Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts in Tel Aviv and won the Ministry of Education’s First Book of Poetry Award. Just one year after its publication, poems from the collection were also included in Shirim Be’Or Male (Poems in Full Light), an anthology initiated by Mifal HaPais and published by Am Oved in 2002.
Book details
Title: Scar Minimizer
Original title: מגמד הצלקות
Author: Mati Shemoelof
Publisher: Gwanim Publishers
Year: 2001
Language: Hebrew
Genre: Poetry