Posted on July 14, 2008 by Steve Pollak
Yonat Hafftka has been writing poetry for more than 30 years. She started as a young girl growing up on kibbutz Afikim and continued when she came to the United States at the age of 22. Her first book, Sum, was published earlier this year by Six Gallery Press.
In an email exchange with Jewish Literary Review, she talked about how she first started writing poetry and described her writing process.
Jewish Literary Review: The book contains poems written between 1975 and 2008. How old were you when you first started writing poetry? What was it that led you to pursue poetry in particular? Were you inspired by someone you knew, a relative perhaps, or another poet's work?
Yonat Hafftka: I started writing as a teenager, possibly because of a need to put down ideas I had no one to share with. I grew up around literary people so poetry was no stranger. My father was a linguist. Family friends were the intellectuals of the kibbutz. All were scholars that chose physical labor out of idealism (most of them ended up teaching). I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I found out when my father died, and I was 20, that he also wrote poetry.
I started enjoying poetry around 6th grade. I had my favorites among the Hebrew poets, such as Leah Goldberg and Rachel. Leah Goldberg wrote about longing, pain and bitterness, which, at the time, I identified with completely. Its only when I come back to her poetry as an adult that I see how the pain and bitterness she wrote about were by far greater than what I felt then or ever. My inspiration came from vivid dreams. Some of them felt prophetic and grandiose and they compelled me to write as if I was broadcasting. While in truth I hardly showed my poems to anyone.
JLR: How would you characterize your poetry?
Hafftka: I guess the main characteristics of my poetry are simplicity, economy and honesty. My writing is simple mostly because English is not my native language and, even if I want to, I can’t usually express the same thing in multiple ways. The economy in my writing is the result of revising each poem over a long period of time. I might start with ten pages and end with one, or more often I would start with one page and end up with a few lines. I don’t consider a poem finished unless it remains unchanged for over a year. Honesty is an ideal I strive for and I hope I achieve, although, I am aware of the vagueness I use to mask the truth when it is too revealing for comfort.
JLR: Given that the poems were written over the course of three decades, I would imagine that the book contains several different phases of your work. If so, how are the phases different from one another?
Hafftka: The book is divided to four sections, ‘Origins’, ‘Discovery’, ‘Investigation’, and ‘Speculation’, each represent a different age. ‘Origins’ includes poems related to growing up. ‘Discovery’ includes poems related to separating from my parents and becoming independent. ‘Investigation’ and ‘Speculation’ followed sequentially and I think the titles become obvious when reading the poems in each section.
JLR: Tell me about your writing process. Do you have a certain place where you do your writing? An office? Kitchen table? Where did you do most of the writing for this book?
Hafftka: It doesn’t matter much to me where I write. It helps if I am alone and can concentrate without interruptions. I have written out in nature, I have written while surrounded with kids. I write very slowly and since I rarely find the time, I go for months just taking notes and saving them for later. Some of the early poems in the book were written out in the woods when I used to take the three-year-old I was then baby-sitting to watch the trains at the Spuyten Duyvil station in Riverdale.
JLR: Do you have a certain time that you prefer? Early in the mornings, late in the afternoon? Midnight? Whenever it's quiet? Do you try to keep a certain schedule for your writing time?
Hafftka: I considered scheduling my writing because I find myself going for long periods without writing a thing. But until now I have never had a schedule or any regularity in writing. The few times I tried to force myself to write on schedule were unsuccessful. Writing seems to only go well when I feel inspired, and there is no regularity in that. I have learned how I might encourage inspiration or avoid the things that might block it, but there is still little predictability in that.
JLR: What's next?
Hafftka: I would like to spend more time on writing. I have been working to earn a living, like most people do, with many hours overtime, and the remaining of my time was taken by family and house keeping. The kids are growing up and I have reduced my responsibilities at work, so possibly in the next few years I will be able to spend more time writing.
Sum, was published earlier this year by Six Gallery Press (66 pages).
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