Walk With Me is the debut poetry collection of Hila Bar, a South African-born writer, translator and editor who has lived in Israel since 1996. Moving between free verse, rhyme, haiku, and prose poetry, these more than eighty poems invite the reader along a quiet road at night, through landscape, memory, and inner musings.
The collection is arranged in seven sections. The Land travels through Israel's desert, farmlands, coastal roads, and sea. Seasons and Time follows autumn rains, morning mist, bonfire nights, Remembrance Day and Independence Day, and the slow passing of years. Depression and Despair speaks honestly about loneliness and darkness, while Family and Fun turns to children, the first day of school, and the small comedies of home. Journey to Self explores silence, patience, faith, and the search for one's own voice. Swords of Iron responds to the war that began in October 2023 and to its grief, from the unseasonal October rains to a mother's loss. A final Miscellaneous section celebrates music, colour, cats, and the moment itself.
Written with a translator's ear for language and a mother's eye for the everyday, Bar's poems hold beauty and heartache side by side. They find the sacred in a peeled carrot or a desert shadow, and they make room for sorrow without giving way to it.
Walk With Me will appeal to readers of contemporary poetry, nature, and place-based writing, and poetry of faith, family and resilience, as well as anyone interested in Israeli life and English-language writing from Israel. Accessible and quietly lyrical, it speaks to the general reader and the devoted poetry lover alike, and makes a fine choice for reflection, book clubs, and gift-giving.
Hila Bar holds degrees in English and Hebrew language and literature and runs Hila Bar Boutique Translations and Editing. She is the founder of the literature platform Iron Words Israel and the mother of six children.
