Hila Ratzabi

Category: poetry

  • See you at Split This Rock!

    I’m looking forward to this year’s Split This Rock Poetry Festival, which features too many amazing poets and panel topics to name. I hope to see you at my reading/panel below. Split This Rock Poetry Festival Thursday, April 14th, 11:30-1:00pm Eco-Feminist Poetry, Intersectionality, & the End of the Earth Jess X. Chen, Safia Elhillo, Clara…

  • Words Off the Page: An Evening with Jewish American Poets

    On December 10th I had the pleasure of reading at the National Museum of American Jewish History with a wonderful group of poets in honor of The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. Below are some photos from the event taken by photographer Matthew Christopher for the Museum. It was particularly special to read with Hal Sirowitz,…

  • Today I spread my poems on the floor

    (Photos by Lindsey Rae Gjording) It’s what every poet eventually has to do if they’re putting together a manuscript. Spread the poems on the floor. Like the batter of a very rich cake, pour it in the pan, spread it evenly. Let it find its shape and settle. But the recipe is not as clear…

  • The Earth Needs Our Poems

    The news around the world is particularly grim lately, with the horrors of war and violence at the forefront of our minds. In the face of such senselessness, it seems fair to ask: Does poetry matter? Can it make a difference? I think about this a lot in the context of my writing on climate change. And I…

  • The Next Big Thing: Poems on Climate Change

    Thank you to poet Ti Kendrick Hall for tagging me in the Next Big Thing! I realize now as I’m writing this that I was tagged once before, a year ago, but at that time I wrote about the story behind founding the Red Sofa Salon & Poetry Workshop. This time I could probably talk…

  • What Did You Do On Your Residency? I Sat And I Stared: A Lesson from Seinfeld

    The writing process is notoriously mysterious and hard to describe, especially when one is in it. Writers are used to having to prove to people that they actually work, even though what they do doesn’t look a lot like work, or a lot like anything. Case in point: I’m coming up on the last week of my…

  • In the Middle of It: Notes from Vermont

    I’m on the other side of the Ides of March, post-Purim (the holiday of reversals), and inhabiting another side of myself. I am two weeks into my first writing residency, with two weeks to go. The first week here at the Vermont Studio Center was long and deep. I started writing immediately on the first…

  • A Tarot Reading and a Writing Routine

    I recently visited a dear poet friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time in Brooklyn. We drank tea, caught up, and then she showed me a new tarot deck. I’d never done a tarot reading before, and didn’t much believe in it, but I decided to give it a try. I shuffled the…

  • Your Writing Is Your Work––It’s Not You

    Yesterday I got an email from a poet friend that began: “I hope all is well with you and your poetry, not that the two are really separable.” I was struck by this line. Am I separable from my poetry? What does the assumption behind that statement mean? At first glance, the statement made perfect…

  • How to Ask for Money as a Poet: A Drama in Ten Parts

    1. Start by actually writing poems. Find that you’re sneaking in writing time wherever you can get it to fit. 2. Realize you have a book inside you. 3. Get really excited you have a book inside you. 4. Apply for artist residencies so that you can have the uninterrupted time and space you need…