Agi Mishol - Things Happen

For the past 30 years, Agi Mishol has lived in Kfar Mordechai, near Gedera, a place she calls "the most natural for me." In her yard, figs and pomegranates are being harvested for market.

She writes in the morning, usually between 8 and 9 a.m., while her mind's alpha waves are still in a dreamlike state. It is then that a poem emerges, often in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. She sits in her kitchen, writing on a simple sheet of paper.

She cares for a menagerie of animals: three dogs (Vashti, Arthur, and Libby), six cats, rabbits, and a duck. "They're the reason I don't travel abroad," she says. "It's the responsibility."

She remembers every poem she has written by heart:

I woke up wrong,
poorly developed.
I was supposed to be glossy,
but I came out matte.

"Agi Mishol belongs, without a doubt, to the great lineage of Hebrew women poets—Leah Goldberg, Dahlia Ravikovitch, and Yona Wallach," wrote the critic Dan Miron. In one of her poems, she wrote, 'With a single step, I could connect earth to heaven.' In the same way, the film seeks to bridge her earthy, sensual, and distinctly local Israeli world with her celestial, metaphysical one.

To date, Agi Mishol has published seventeen books of poetry. She is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the prestigious Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award in 2019.

A film by Yael Perlov and Ruth Walk, it is part of the series A Room of One's Own: Women Writing.

***

About the Series:

A Room of One's Own: Women Writing is a series about women whose lives are dedicated to the craft of writing—women for whom writing is not just a profession, but an existential necessity.

In 1929, the English author Virginia Woolf wrote in her book, A Room of One's Own, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." It is remarkable how relevant these words, written decades ago, remain today. The five women featured in this series exemplify the very struggles Woolf alluded to. To make writing the center of their lives, they face a relentless and often bitter struggle for personal and financial independence, frequently making social and familial sacrifices along the way.

The series consists of five episodes, each dedicated to one woman. It captures a day in her life within her natural environment—her "room of one's own." This space encompasses her writing desk, her social circles, and her daily routines. Through this lens, the series delves into the unique thoughts and characteristics that define her as a writer and explores how the act of writing propels her life forward.

The common thread uniting these women is the profound importance of the written word in both their intellectual and practical lives, and the inherent struggles that arise from this commitment.

By observing their daily lives, the films decode why writing constitutes their entire world and examine the interplay between their texts and their lived experiences. The series aims to sketch a portrait of the woman behind the words. In one of her stories, Orly Castel-Bloom wrote, "I live on paper." This sentence, reflecting a deep-seated need to write while also ironically hinting at the perceived "unreal" nature of a woman's life lived solely "on paper," captures the series' goal: to showcase the authors' devotion to their craft while simultaneously emphasizing the reality and significance of their lives. The series reveals women who live not just "on paper," but in the world, fully realizing their inner selves and spirits.