Biography
Raquel Sanchez, born in Paris to a Brooklyn mother painter, Ellen Lapidus, and Venezuelan father poet, Juan Sánchez Peláez (1922-2003), spent parts of her childhood in Spain, England, Venezuela and Morocco. She obtained her Master’s degree in social work at Yeshiva University in New York, and worked in ghettos rehabilitating gang members and helping families in crisis. Raquel came to Israel in 1994 and has been instrumental in government policy reform with regard to helping English speaking youth in crisis. Raquel is presently a Ph.D candidate at NYU and an adjunct Professor at Yeshiva University in New York. Raquel remains connected with the project she began for Anglo youth in Israel and also for her work in the project on her poems for Pookh Music.
Although many great artists have commented about Sanchez’s work, none is more crucial for her than the comments her poetry receives from her father; Juan Sanchez Pelaez, the many year Poet Laureate of Venezuela. His “favorite,” he comments, is “Slick Freeway.”
“Her poems are unequivocally oral, following the populist style of the Beats. She is at her best when panoramic rather than personal - which can be deceptive because her poems almost always appear to be based on intensely personal experience. On close examination however, her measure of controlled ecstasy is curiously sensuous rather than sensual. She never goes down, really; never goes completely carnal, as do so many of the (Expressionist) poets of the ‘60s. Whatever the dynamic, it is instinctive with Sanchez whose poems by default reveal the true nature of the poet’s inspiration. She has hit upon the thing that makes her poem tick with a timeliness that may in fact exceed the times… Sanchez’s poems also conceal a curious lack of touch, which paradoxically offsets the poem through shades of contrast, creating a cool backdrop for a spiraling, mystical experience” - Larry Freifeld, of the Israel Association of Writers in English
“I first heard Raquel read her poems to me in a cafe in Jerusalem...Her poems are powerful often with a staying thumping rhythm” - Lois Michal Unger.
