Born in Ramat Gan, Dalia Rabikovitch was educated on Kibbutz Geva, went to high school in Haifa, and then studied at the Hebrew University. She taught high school for a number of years.

Her early poems appeared in the 1950s in Hebrew poet Avraham Shlonsky's journal, "Orlion". In addition to her poetry, Rabikovitch has written some prose, as well as several children's' books. She has translated poetry by William Butler Yeats, Edgar Allan Poe and T.S. Eliot into Hebrew, as well as the children's' story, "Mary Poppins."

Her early poems were romantic, complete with the lure of exotic, distant places. Love and lust are occasionally overwhelming in her poetry. She also wrote about mythological figures, including palaces and kings, dream worlds and fairy tales, magic and witchcraft.

Her later work is marked by satire and sarcasm, with free-flowing language that is almost colloquial. At the center of all her poems, is a speaker with great sensitivity who conveys a fervent intellectualism and deep emotional perception.

She became active in the Israeli peace movement with the war in Lebanon (1982).

Dalia Rabikovitch received the Bialik Prize in 1987. She also received the Shlonsky Prize and the Prime Minister's Prize. In 1998, she was awarded the highly prestigious Israel Prize for her major contribution to Hebrew poetry and her unique combination of "personal testament" and "universal truths".

Regrettably, she is not well known beyond the Hebrew-speaking public: only two anthologies have been published in English, these from her middle period, although individual poems have been published in several languages

Rabikovitch died tragically in August 2005, taking her own life, which shocked Israeli literary circles and her friends, politicians Yael Dayan and Yossi Sarid. She is survived by her son, Ido.

Recommended Links

Biography, list of publications
http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=209

Hebrew
http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/hebrew/people/Dalya.html