The kerchief on her head and long skirt she was wearing didn't stop Zvia Margaliot, an Orthodox Jewish wife and mother from Jerusalem, from winning the Poetry Slam competition last week at Tel Aviv's Levontin 7 club.

As opposed to many spoken-word (memorized text) artists as well as prophets of doom or ordinary street-corner poets, Margaliot does not preach anything; on the contrary, she succeeded in conveying her profound ideas through a great deal of humor and charm.

At Poetry Slam, Margaliot performed two of her original selections: In "Charity Will Save From Death," she spoke about her complex relationship with the poor of Jerusalem, while "A Third Breast" was about breast feeding, couples and family.

"May He be blessed and His name be blessed, who created His world/ With such fatal disharmony, with such total lack of coordination/ Between nothing and not a thing/ Eternity he gave to stones, and to words, to world-famous poets, the poor things. And to me he gave dishes,/ laundry, laundry, yes, why hide it/ And the nights that end only when the three of us are already exhausted,/ And to be the materials from which poems are created," she declaimed towards the end of the "The Third Breast."

While the audience was still surprised by the words, Margaliot took an artistic pause, then ended the selection with a line that resolved the ostensible contradiction contained in her blessing. To those interested in hearing how, she will take part in another evening of Poetry Slam tomorrow at Jerusalem's Avram Bar.

Margaliot, 29, studied acting and works as a tour guide in Jerusalem. She says she does theatrical tours in which she plays imaginary Jerusalem characters, and under cover of these characters performs spoken-word selections. "I started to do spoken word - and discovered that that's what it's called - about half a year ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter. I write poetry, but I think that there's something very annoying about poetry: All the pomp that accompanies it, that heaviness at poetry evenings. On the other hand, 'spoken' has the atmosphere of the slam, in other words of a contest. You have to be relevant, to speak simply, in everyday language. I like that."

Margaliot distinguishes between the spoken word that she performs as a tour guide and what she performs on stage. "When they applaud at a performance of spoken during the tours, it's because I've explained the city well. But on stage the applause is because I was able to convey myself, my ideas and feelings."

Enough complaining

In addition to Hebrew poets such as Zelda, Natan Alterman and Rivka Miriam (with whom she even took writing lessons ), Margaliot mentions as a source of inspiration the Israeli rapper, actor and spoken-word artist Amit Ullman, who is called "Pedro Grass" (from the alternative hip-hop ensemble "The Victor Jackson Show" ).

The first time she performed in a poetry slam (and was eliminated in the first round ), Margaliot watched Pedro Grass perform a selection from "Entering the Central Bus Station," where he describes dialogues with security guards at the Jerusalem bus terminal. During those minutes, she says, "I understood something about spoken word." After that evening she went back home and wrote the two selections with which she won the slam last week.

"Look, in my opinion the weakness of spoken word is that it sort of invites artists to complain," she acknowledges. "They give you a platform, so kick them in the soft underbelly, stage a protest and all that. But Pedro doesn't complain, he tries to achieve some kind of inner truth."

Margaliot also sings and plays the guitar, but for now her more musical performances are meant for women only, because of religious restrictions. Soon she'll be working with a female director friend to adapt the performance to a mixed audience.

As an Orthodox Jewish woman, where does she draw the line on women giving voice to lyrics in front of men? "I have no idea, I go according to the halakha [religious law] and there is no prohibition against spoken word, so why not?" she replies.

After winning the competition in Levontin 7 Margaliot was called back for an encore, in which she performed a selection called "Do Yoga." It begins: "We have neighbors, the type that do yoga. Do yoga./ Is yoga noisy? Does yoga dirty our laundry? Does yoga bring dubious characters to the building?/ Do yoga." The audience looked amused, but later seemed stung by the following passage: "Our neighbors have no mentality, that's why they say we'll do yoga/ ... /That's also why they're leftists/ Leftists have no mentality either, and then they get to yoga and all that." One could assume that the combination of yoga and left-wing tendencies was very familiar to many of those present.

Wasn't she afraid of the reactions? "Yes, and I even got a little mixed up with the words, suddenly everyone became so serious," she says. Then she adds: "It's not so brave to perform this selection in front of a Tel Aviv audience, because the entire selection is more making fun of myself. If I'm criticizing anything there it's the xenophobia, the fear of anyone who is different from you. And those are not necessarily characteristics of the liberal left."