Malka Locker | |
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![]() Malka Locker in the 1950s. | |
Born | 1887 Kuty, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary |
Died | 1990 Jerusalem |
Occupation | Poet |
Language | Yiddish |
Malka Locker (1887–1990; Hebrew: מלכה לוקר; Yiddish: מלכּה לאָקער) was a Ukrainian-born Israeli poet, writing primarily in Yiddish.
Malka Locker was born in 1887 in Kuty, known in Yiddish as Kitev, a town in what was then the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, now Ukraine. [1] [2] [3] She came from a long line of rabbis, and education was important to her family, with Malka receiving a secular education as well as a Yiddish one. [3] She went on to learn German, French, and English, as well as Polish, Ukrainian, and Hebrew. [3]
In 1910, she married the Zionist activist Berl Locker, who was her cousin. [1] [4] The couple traveled the world together, spending a decade living in London from 1938 to 1948. [1] [2] They permanently settled in Israel in 1948, having first spent time in then- Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s. [5] [6]
Locker is best known for her work as a poet, but she did not begin writing poetry until she was 42 years old. [1] [4] She began writing on the suggestion of a friend, who had identified a "poetic quality" in her correspondence. [1] As she began to publish poems in the 1930s, her work received some notice from Yiddish critics. [1]
She published at least six books of poetry, beginning with Velt un mentsh ("World and Man") in 1931. [1] [7] Subsequent collections included Du ("You") in 1932; Shtet ("Cities"), about London, in 1942; and The World Is Without a Protector: 1940–1945 in 1947. [1] [2] [3] [7] While she wrote primarily in Yiddish, she also published one book of poems in German, and her writing was also translated into Hebrew and French. [1] [8]
Locker also produced various works of literary criticism, with a focus on French romantic and symbolic poetry, including a 1965 book on Arthur Rimbaud, a 1970 biography of Charles Baudelaire, and a 1976 biography of Paul Verlaine. [1] [3] [7] [9] [10] [11] She was also a composer, notably writing the choral works "Luekh trts"v" and "Luekh trts'kh" in 1938, and would sing in Yiddish locally and internationally. [2]
She died in Jerusalem in 1990, at age 103. [1]