Welcome Author Uvi Poznansky

Uvi Poznansky is an author, poet and artist. She earned her B. A. in Architecture and Town Planning from the Technion in Haifa, Israel. During her studies and in the years immediately following her graduation, she practiced with an innovative Architectural firm, taking a major part in the large-scale project, 'Home for the Soldier'; a controversial design that sparked fierce public debate.

At the age of 25 Uvi moved to Troy, N.Y. with her husband and two children. Before long, she received a Fellowship grant and a Teaching Assistantship from the Architecture department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she guided teams in a variety of design projects; and where she earned her M.A. in Architecture. Then, taking a sharp turn in her education, she earned her M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan.

During the years she spent in advancing her career--first as an architect, and later as a software engineer, software team leader, software manager and a software consultant (with an emphasis on user interface for medical instruments devices)--she wrote and painted constantly, and exhibited in Israel and California. In addition, she taught art appreciation classes. Her versatile body of work can be seen online at uviart.com. It includes bronze and ceramic sculptures, oil and watercolor paintings, charcoal, pen and pencil drawings, and mixed media.

Uvi published two children books, Jess and Wiggle and Now I Am Paper. For each one of these books, she created an animation video (see Author Videos at the bottom of her Amazon author page.)

She won great acclaim for her novel, Apart From Love, published February 2012. Her poetry book, Home (in tribute to her father, the poet and writer Zeev Kachel) has been published September 2012.

Home (a poetry book)

Book synopsis:

Home. A simple word; a loaded one. You can say it in a whisper; you can say it in a cry. Expressed in the voices of father and daughter, you can hear a visceral longing for an ideal place, a place never to be found again.

Imagine the shock, imagine the sadness when a daughter discovers her father’s work, the poetry he had never shared with anyone during the last two decades of his life. Six years after that moment of discovery, which happened in her childhood home while mourning for his passing, Uvi Poznansky presents a tender tribute: a collection of poems and prose, half of which is written by her, and half—by her father, the author, poet and artist Zeev Kachel. She has been translating his poems for nearly a year, with careful attention to rhyme and rhythm, in an effort to remain faithful to the spirit of his words.

Zeev’s writing is always autobiographical in nature; you can view it as an ongoing diary of his life. Uvi’s writing is rarely so, especially when it comes to her prose. She is a storyteller who delights in conjuring up various figments of her imagination, and fleshing them out on paper. She sees herself chasing her characters with a pen, in an attempt to see the world from their point of view, and to capture their voices. But in some of her poems, she offers you a rare glimpse into her most guarded, intensely private moments, yearning for Home.

Excerpt:

“Here is the place—he can bring it back—his first home.

Straight ahead is the door with a big handle high above. He can easily reach it, standing on the tips of his toes and pushing, pushing forward. It opens! Here is the room, which he shares with his sister, Batia. He is three yours old; she is five. And somehow he knows: she will come in later, much later. He can climb into bed now. Sleep is coming; he can feel it. Sleep is almost here. 

It weighs heavily on his lids, but—for just a second—he can lift his dreamy gaze and look up at the painted ceiling. Half of it is night, with a large crescent moon surrounded by a swirl of stars, the other half—day, with a bright, yellow sun. He rubs his eyes, astonished. Nothing like this has ever happened before: They stir! The sun, the moon and the glowing stars—they all seem to move, seem to turn overhead... 

Then, all of the sudden, amidst the glow, he finds himself standing at the banks of a lake with his daddy. He lets go of his daddy’s hand, flings a stone and at once he can spot—right there, in the middle of the lake—a ripple taking shape. One circle rises magically inside another, widening, riding out farther and farther until at long last it fades out. White lilies can be seen floating all around. One of them is right here, at arms reach. Only a thin line, the line of illusion, separates the petal from its white reflection. And underneath it, schools of golden fish scurry in one direction, then take a sharp turn and flow elsewhere. 

And from somewhere in the distance he can hear a shrill sound: the whistle of a train. Soon, Zeev knows, it will go out of earshot again, as the train travels past the hills, going away on its mysterious journey, calling him to come, calling him to follow.”

Apart From Love (a novel)

Book synopsis:

Written with passionate conviction, this story is being told by two of its characters: Ben, a twenty-seven years old student, and Anita, a plain-spoken, spunky, uneducated redhead, freshly married to Lenny, his aging father. Behind his back, Ben and Anita find themselves increasingly drawn to each other. They take turns using an old tape recorder to express their most intimate thoughts, not realizing at first that their voices are being captured by him. 

Meanwhile, Lenny is trying to keep a secret from both of them: his ex-wife, Ben's mother, a talented pianist, has been stricken with an early-onset alzheimer. Taking care of her gradually weighs him down. What emerges in these characters is a struggle, a desperate, daring struggle to find a path out of conflicts, out of isolation, from guilt to forgiveness.

Excerpt:

“About a year ago I sifted through the contents of my suitcase, and was just about to discard a letter, which my father had written to me some time ago. Almost by accident my eye caught the line, I have no one to blame for all this but myself, which I had never noticed before, because it was written in an odd way, as if it were a secret code, almost: upside down, in the bottom margin of the page, with barely a space to allow any breathing.

The words left some impression in my memory. I almost wished he were next to me, so I could not only listen to him, but also record his voice saying that.

I imagined him back home, leaning over his desk, scrawling each letter with the finest of his pens with great care, as if focusing through a thick magnifying glass. The writing was truly minute, as if he had hated giving away even the slightest hint to a riddle I should have been able to solve on my own. I detested him for that. And so, thinking him unable to open his heart to me, I could never bring myself to write back. In hindsight, that may have been a mistake.

Even so, I am only too happy to agree with him: the blame for what happened in our family is his. Entirely his. If not for his actions ten years ago, I would never have run away to Firenze, to Rome, to Tel Aviv. And if not for his actions a couple of weeks ago, this frantic call for me to come back and see him would never have been made.

And so I find myself standing here, on the threshold of where I grew up, feeling utterly awkward. I knock, and a stranger opens the door. The first thing that comes to mind: what is she doing here? The second thing: she is young, much too young for him. The third: her hair. Red.”

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