11 Facts About Dahlia Ravikovitch

Dahlia Ravikovitch was an Israeli poet, translator and recipient of the Israel Prize for Poetry in 1998.

Dahlia Ravikovitch learned to read and write at the age of three.

Dahlia Ravikovitch's father, Levi, was a Jewish engineer originally from Russia who arrived in Mandatory Palestine from China.

Dahlia Ravikovitch's mother, Michal, was a teacher who came from a religious household.

When Dahlia Ravikovitch was six, her father was run over and killed by a drunken driver.

Dahlia Ravikovitch moved to Kibbutz Geva with her mother but did not fit into the collectivist mentality and at 13 moved to a foster home in Haifa, the first of several foster homes.

Dahlia Ravikovitch worked as a journalist and high school teacher.

Dahlia Ravikovitch translated works of W B Yeats, T S Eliot and Edgar Allan Poe, and the book Mary Poppins into Hebrew.

Dahlia Ravikovitch's first book of poetry, The Love of an Orange, published in 1959, established her as one of Israel's leading young native-born poets.

Gold has argued against the popular interpretation of Dahlia Ravikovitch's poem "Hovering at a Low Altitude" as a political poem, instead contending that it should be understood as a personal, lyrical one.

Dahlia Ravikovitch's best known poem is Booba Memukenet.