Ho! and the Transnational Turn in Contemporary Israeli Poetry

Abstract:Since its 2005 inaugural issue, the Israeli literary journal Ho! has situated translation at the center of its efforts to revitalize and redirect the flows of contemporary Hebrew poetry from the Israeli local to an expanding global network of Israeli writers and poets who live in translational states, living and working outside of Israel and, in several cases, in other languages. Ho!'s commitment to translation is closely connected to its embrace of a transnational model of Hebrew literature. In this article, I examine the critical reception of Ho!'s first issues and the debates that followed between its authors and critics over what constitutes the Israeli here and now, a question that also forces a reevaluation of where Hebrew literature's diasporic past—and present—is located in contemporary Israeli culture. By retracing the comparative and multilingual encounters of modern Hebrew literature's Jewish, diasporic past, and reengaging these encounters via translation, Ho! advances a transnational model as the present and future of Israeli literature.