Rafi Aaron

In October 2004 Rafi Aaron delivered the Alexander Mackenzie Memorial Lecture at the University of St. Petersburg, Russia, where he read his poems on Osip Mandelstam. A documentary on Rafi entitled The Sound Traveller, produced by Endless Films, is currently airing on Bravo TV and Book Television. For the work in Surviving the Censor - The Unspoken Words of Osip Mandelstam he has received a Canada Council grant, A Works In Progress Grant from the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), two Writers Reserve Grants from the OAC, a scholarship to the Banff Centre for the Arts, and was a visiting writer at the Artist House in Herzilya, Israel.

Four of the poems in Surviving the Censor were short listed for the 2002 National Magazine Awards. Aaron’s prose poem ‘Voronezh’ was chosen by Tim Lilburn as a wining entry in Grain’s annual writing competition. Selections from this book were finalists for the CBC Literary Awards in 2002 and 2005.

Rafi Aaron is the curator and poet for the travelling exhibit A Seed in the Pocket of Their Blood. The exhibit, which combines poetry and photography into one artistic unit, has been viewed by over one million people in Canada, the United States and Israel. Aaron’s book of poetry, also entitled A Seed In The Pocket Of Their Blood was acquired by Syracuse University Press in October, 2000 and launched in the United States with a reading at the Canadian Consulate in New York, with additional readings in Los Angles, and Washington D.C.

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