The Mad House

By Lali Tsipi Michaeli

Lali Tsipi Michaeli is an Israeli poet. Born in Georgia in 1964, she immigrated to Israel at the age of seven. She has published six poetry books so far and attended numerous international poetry festivals. She was part of a residency program for talented writers in New York in 2018. Her books have been translated into foreign languages in the USA, France, Italy, Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, and Iran. Lali was defined by Prof. Gabriel Moked in his book as “Erotico-Urban Poet” and was highly regarded by critics, who consider her as an innovative and combative poet. In 2011 Lali produced a collection of poetry for protest “Resistance”, in which she presents her personal poetic manifesto, claiming that “poetry as a whole is a revolt.” In the past decade, Lali has created 15 Poetry Video Art projects that have taken part in world poetry festivals such as ZEBRA in Berlin. “The poem is not purely individual. It is common ground and should be heard in a great voice,” the poet claims. Lali teaches Hebrew at Ben Gurion University. She has one son and lives in Tel Aviv by the sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adelaide Books Publishers
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781954351158

Lali Tsipi Michaeli

Lali Tsipi Michaeli is an Israeli poet. Born in Georgia in 1964, she immigrated to Israel at the age of seven. She has published six poetry books so far and attended numerous international poetry festivals. She was part of a residency program for talented writers in New York in 2018. Her books have been translated into foreign languages in USA, France, Italy, Georgia, Ukraina, Russia, Romania and Iran. Lali was defined by Prof. Gabriel Moked in his book as “Erotico-Urban Poet” and was highly regarded by critics, who consider her as an innovative and combative poet. In 2011 Lali produced a collection of poetry for protest “Resistance”, in which she presents her personal poetic manifesto, claiming that “poetry as a whole is a revolt.” In the past decade, Lali has created 15 Poetry Video Art projects that have taken part in world poetry festivals such as ZEBRA in Berlin. “The poem is not purely individual. It is common ground and should be heard in a great voice,” the poet claims. Lali teaches Hebrew at Ben Gurion University. She has one son and lives in Tel Aviv by the sea.

Book preview

The dead do not say - I love you

Thirty years

You are a dark picture

A fly sits on you

What can be said

Next to this silence

No matter what,

The dead do not say

I love you.

THE MAD HOUSE

I thought people wouldn’t live in a house like this

They would only visit during opening hours

And before they leave they would write a few words

in a big notebook

When I entered I understood that there isn’t

Any big notebook with a pen attached to it

There are toilets, a kitchen, a bedroom

And walls covered with the live imagination

Of dead artists

An architect lives there with

A drawing table and a model of a house,

Rulers and a designed space

A lot of beauty comes out of this space

The outside comes in and

The inside goes out

I live now

In the Mad house

Looking out to the sea view

To the dock and the garden

And the naked man on the balcony

Is holding my hand

RIGHT OF ENTRY

Lifting up my head to see again the strangeness

In the entrance of the building.

I go up one, two, three steps,

Tap the code.

The beep opens me the heavy wooden