The Metula Poetry Festival will be held in Jerusalem for the third year instead of its usual location, the northern village located on the war-torn Lebanon-Israel border.

Metula became a temporary ghost town in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in southern Israel, when Lebanese terror group Hezbollah opened a second front against Israel.

With Hezbollah rockets and drones targeting the area, residents were evacuated for more than a year.

Following the latest round of war with Hezbollah, when the terrorist group again targeted Israel’s north, the village is still under repair, and not all of its 2,000 residents have returned.

Poet Karen Alkalay-Gat, a regular at the festival and one of its speakers this year, said she will miss the charms of Metula.

“I enjoy the festival more in Metula,” said Alkalay-Gat.

Still, when the festival takes place August 25 to 27 at Jerusalem’s Confederation House under the direction of Effie Benaya, Alkalay-Gat will be there on August 26 to discuss her latest book, “Here Lies a Poet: Journeys to Poets’ Graves,” about her visit to poets’ burial places as a curious traveler.

While many of the panels and sessions will revolve around Israeli poets and writers, others will focus on the work and research conducted by local literati such as Alkalay-Gat, who taught English literature for decades at Tel Aviv University.

Alkalay-Gat’s unexpected project began by chance about a decade ago, when she........

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