Editors Choice: Salih Mercanoğlu
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Editors Choice:Emel Irtem
Emel İrtem She was born in July, 25, 1969 in Eskişehir-‐Seyitgazi. She graduated from Latin Language and Literature in Istanbul University, Faculty of Arts and Letters. In 1999, she was awarded with Orhon Murat Arıburnu Award with her file "Divaneliğe Dönen Pergel". This file was published with the same name that year from Hera Publishing. She was featured in various journals and newspapers with her articles, short stories and poetry. In 2005, her children's book Seker Farenin Kitaplığı was published from Kare Publishing. In 2006, her poetry collection Zehirli Rüya was published from Yitik Ülke Publishing. In 2007, her poetry collection Marcus’un Lisan-‐ı Kalbi was published from Artshop Publishing. In 2009 her poetry collection Zaviyesi Yıkık Gönye was published from the same publisher. She was awarded with Sevda Ergin Award in 2010 International Poetry Festival. İn 2013 her poetry collection “Sana Seviyem was published from İkaros Publishing, in 2016, her poetry collection “ Seçme Şiirler- Kağıttan Kapılar” was published form Artshop Publishing, She works in the health industry and lives in Eskişehir.
time wears out
old times, which you think wearisome
have ended inside me
while burning with summer sunshine
While you grew pale
the birds have become blind
I used to laugh et the labels on mannequins
what you think wearisome
hurts me so much
while thinking of old things
I understand that summer
is the shadow of a scarf
you knew the smell of deserted places
your father was there
he had given you his straight razor
and you had cut my throat with it
what you think wearisome
was a ridiculous summer
I too, I matured in the old times
now the summer is mossy
and my soul, while turning on
the lights of the sun
knows how painful it is to be delayed
who can know that once upon a time
summers were a flowery sea
I wish I could give up my love
but my soul has grown so weary
Translated by Tozan Alkan
Warm welcome for a guest poet:Chad Norman
His poems have appeared for the past 35 years in literary publications across Canada, as well as a number of other countries around the world.
He hosts and organizes RiverWords: Poetry & Music festival each year in Truro, NS., held at Riverfront Park , the 2nd Saturday of each July.
In October 2016 he was invited by the Nordic Assn. for Canadian Studies to give talks on Canadian Poetry and read from his books at Borupgaard Gym in Copenhagen, and Risskov Gym in Aarhus, as well as other readings in both cities and Malmo, Sweden. Norman is currently working on a manuscript, Counting Coins In Denmark & Sweden.
His most recent book, Learning To Settle Down, came out 2015 , from Black Moss Press (University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada), and a new book, Selected & New Poems is due out April 2017 from Mosaic Press (Oakville, Ontario, Canada).
His love of walks is endless.
ROMERICA, THE STOWAWAY
for Michael M.
I study one of my sons while he sleeps
on a broken sofa his first night in Copenhagen,
a similar study undertaken 13 years ago
as a marriage formed a family under one roof,
I study him now that we are away,
the faint breaths make me think of decline,
how at home we both watch politicians
make their predictable decisions, amused
and saddened, both of us know, him
at his age, and me at mine, there may be
no escape, quite possibly even as an ocean
is between this country and that ill empire
we may have allowed to stowaway within us,
may have carried its crumbling through Customs,
that ill empire we hope hasn't come with us
and isn't spreading its illness outside
the window above a street full of cyclists,
full of what appears to be choices in favour
of a healthy air, a smaller car, a livable future,
what appears to be the window a few feet
away from him sleeping, perhaps dreaming
of a Denmark he believes we will soon see.
Casa Harris, Truro, NS
October 29, 2016
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Editors Choice:Murat Nemet-NejatMurat Nemet-Nejat's recent publications include the poems The Spiritual Life of Replicants (Talisman House, 2011), Animals of Dawn (Talisman House, 2016); the translation from the Turkish poet Seyhan Erözçelik Rosestrikes and Coffee Grinds (Talisman House, 2010) and the republication of the translation from the Turkish poet Ece Ayhan A Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies (Green Integer Press, 2015); and the essays "Holiness and Jewish Rebellion: 'Questions of Accent' Twenty Years Afterward" (Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and "Dear Charles, Letters from a Turk: Mayan Letters, Herman Melville and Eda" (Letters for Olson, gathered and edited by Benjamin Hollander (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016).
Nemet-Nejat is also the editor of the anthology Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Talisman House, 2014). He is presently writing Camels and Weasels, the sixth part in a seven-part serial poem The Structure of Escape. "
Hummingbird
Before we part did
A moment we share together
you having placed a small nutrient vial of translucent liquid on your porch
and I, watching birds dipping into them
you away,
in instantaneous darts.
Does THAT have to exist? I can't remember. D I D.
An instant on the threshold of not remembering, the change of time zones— erasure of
the table of memory—the humming bird approaches the moment of stasis—of jump.
The Girl
The sleepy tree,
Among the vegetable life
of the garden,
A mailbox,
the sentry before the garden,
silent.
A caterpillar
lands on it,
green,
A disoriented, half-hearted fugitive
from the green
garden,
Framed by a window
a girl of eight,
bored by the whizzing
summer,
her eyelid twitches
as The Fly
on the window
Squeezes,
cleans its head.
Jackson Pollock
Time—a spray of colors, there only when it’slookedat, following the rhythms of attentions,
the eye's recalcitrant incorrigible darts every instant a variant color, past,
present & future of a distant self-penetrating dream.
a dream within a dream.
Like cockroaches, images (facts) hide into themselves
only when a lightning's switched, to light the darkness.
bezel
dew is the tears of the dream
death is the ultimate moss
growing, morning
after.
bedecking dream in its
shadows.
beelzebub
Lover
Objects are
algorthymic dreams, hebanonical fragments lying there in plain sight,
nibbling
my ear.
through your transparent gown,
low light from a table lamp in the back room.
your long legs
were luminous in the door.
i moved fearlessly.
guilt hung back
on the acacia trees
in the rain.
the church bells was calling folks
to prayer.
we spread a picnic blanket
on the bed.
that's how everything happened first.
Poems from Murat Nemet-Nejat's Animals of Dawn
(Talisman House, Publishers:S Northfield, Massachusetts, 2016)
Hamlet and Its Hidden Texts: Poems as Commentary, Film Lumière
Hamlet is the holy text that is at the heart of things, real or unreal, objects, living or un- living. Almost every piece in the poem is a commentary—a riff of thought, a speculative argument, a parallel alternative text, a counter argument or counter fact—turning around a specific word or phrase, a disjointed twisting of fact or a suggestive, elusive echo that occurs in the peripheries of the reader’s/listener’s mind—out of the focus of the linearity of the main action, the revenge, in the play.
The paradigm of a text made completely of commentaries, like moths flying around a holy text with its own distinct linguistic identity, is The Talmud.18 Here is what I write about the nature of such a text in “Eleven Septembers Later: Readings of Benjamin Hollander’s Vigilance19:
Precedents of Prophecy (Film Lumière)
The verbal precedent of a poem whose ideal condition is stasis is The Talmud. In it single words explode into commentaries. It can not be read but stopped at every word and riffed from; re-read continuously, super-imposed, blurred commentaries creating the Jewish consciousness of responsibility and guilt.... The visual precedent of Vigilance is photography... The space created by photography/film lumière has an unconscious, to its viewer reflecting, revealing the dreams, aspirations, fears of her teeming population. Superimpositions of different media—film, T.V., the web and words emanating from them—on photography, which film lumière is, creates a unified field/space which is prophetic.
The perennial question on Hamlet is why Hamlet does not go from A to B in a linear line, “swift as the meditations of love” or, as Laertes does, “defying hell”; but meanders, mostly travels in a world of ideas, and arrives at his purposed destination, seemingly by default, exhausted, feeding on the immediate carnage around him. He does so because he exists in stasis, in “a ... field/space which is prophetic.” The sole action he can commit is death. It is the space where consciousness (the soul) is born. It has nothing to do with character or a character defect though Hamlet himself thinks so.20
Hamlet’s is a language of the soul progressing towards dying.
Hamlet’s language is not of acting, of showing; but of an “isness” outside “living” speech: “Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not seems... nor all the suspirations of breath... can denote me truly.” His focus is on a dissolution of the body towards the un- human and un-living: in essence the dissolution of a Wittgensteinian language of exchange and observable, speakable f(acts) towards silence. This dichotomy in the play is distilled in its concept of time as speed and slowness, their duality. Hamlet is aware and fatally wounded by what Claudius defends: speed, the imploding speed between the vigil of death and the merriment of marriage, warping time. Hamlet “meanders” outside speed in a state of stasis, though he himself sees it as paralysis. The two are irreconcilable. Though they point to the same facts, like convex and concave mirrors reflecting each other, the wall in between is unbreachable. That unbreachableness (the way the consciousness of the living, the real, the rational can not breach into the consciousness of the un-living, unreal) is at the heart of Hamlet’s mysterious power, what makes it a holy text.
Ophelia occupies a space between the two. Her death, a union with water and plants, points to a moment when the focus of the conscious mind (consciousness itself) turns from life to another dimension (vigil) of lamentation and song: “... Her clothes spread wide/And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;/Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,/ As one incapable of her own distress [italics my own].”
*
Laertes’ and Polonius’s warnings to Ophelia about the unreliability and lastingness of Hamlet’s love for her turn out to be true. Hamlet’s love turns into abuse and mockery, interspersed only with an unpleasantly perfunctory profession of love at her death. But, though the predicted result occurs, it has little to do with Polonius’s cynical view of young passion or Laertes’s decorous argument relating to the real politic involved in the marriage of a prince. The cause lies in another dimension, the space of the ghost.
The a-causal, infinite space of Hamlet.
(Or, from the space of an ideogram, a constellation of quantum jumps—sacred and rebellious—arising from the inherent nature of words.)
Animals of Dawn (part of things, real or unreal, objects, living or un-living) is not a comparison, a metaphor; it is not like Hamlet. Rather, its Talmudic commentaries are against Hamlet, subverting and reconfirming its autonomic, ever elusive sanctity—its otherness. In a sense, in Animals of Dawn I try to transform Hamlet, at least for a single moment, into a plant, an animal, a speck of dust, a dew.
Not a moment of understanding, but bee-ing.
December 29, 2015
©Murat Nemet-Nejat
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Editors Choice: Polat Onat
POLAT ONAT: Born in Istanbul in 1979, is a primary school teacher. Since 2000, his poems and essays on poetry have been published in many Turkish literary magazine including, Varlık, E, Heves, Başka, Kavram Karmaşa, Şiir Ülkesi, Sepya, Budala, Kuzey Yıldızı, İmlasız, Ağır Ol Bay Düzyazı, Daktilo, Ay, Akatalpa. His first book "The End" was published in 2009, followed by "The Old Man's Death" in 2011.
THE HUT
ink disperses as it touches paper
gloomy forests branch in moonlight
night’s other half hides in snow and blizzard
bitter and serene like the pleasures of our hut
I’m not hungry tea poems well-steeped time on my hands
fire crackles in the fireplace Mary my little angel with me
listen to me our dreams don’t need to be our consolations.
Translated by Nesrin Eruysal & Ken Fifer
THE ROAD
in the middle of real life in the black desert of the road
memories you cannot forget should I say things that never happened
our fate's to tire before the road ends
I readied myself for death like any clumsy poet
I heard the desolate wind with my eyes
I knew you never loved me not for one second
wash waving and my severed heart left out the dry.
Translated by: Nesrin Eruysal & Ken Fifer
poems are published at: http://polatonat.blogspot.com/search/label/Turkish%20Poetry%20Today
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Warm welcome for a guest poet:Alisa Velaj
Alisa Velaj was born in the southern port town of Vlora, Albania in 1982. Velaj has been shortlisted for the annual international Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in June 2014. Her works have appeared in over seventy print and online international magazines like: The Journal, Envoi Magazine, The Cannon’s Mouth, Erbacce, FourW twenty-five Anthology, The Dallas Review, The Linnet's Wings, Poetry Scotland, The Seventh Quarry and etc.
SALUTE TO DESPAIRS!
1.
A am afraid
Every time I see myself on the mirror as sky, fall season or sea,
For leaden clouds of despair suddenly unfold while despair I am not,
For my color pales while I crave life as much as the fir-trees in front of my stump do,
And, with no notice at all, I get discolored while my spirit breathes blueness.
I am afraid to be a fir-tree
While thoughts of the previous winter's timber pile up
Under a grey sky, under a grey sea...
For the only tree I loved!
2.
Light up a candle for me tonight!
Let it illumine the road for the demented traveler –
The one that holds in his hand an unlit candle and still
Begs the wind to not blow out its flame.
Burn a candle for me tonight!
Let it melt down in the embodiment of a fake snowman;
Illusions alike are fire and ice.
Pray for me tonight, in the name of Christ Jesus, please do!
A long while now, I've been looking for roads nowhere promised.
So I then begin to hold a grudge against the winds...
3.
If he wants the light, he will leave,
With his back turned to the nest
where the eagle is bound to shackles.
He will return, if he needs the light,
With the idea to never again abandon himself
Amidst fields where breath bears white angels…
Translated from Albanian by Arben P. Latifi
Editors Choice:Metin Fındıkçı
Metin Fındıkçı was born December 1, 1961 in Mardin,Turkey. He was the first child of eight. Because his dad had said “My children should go to school”, they moved to Ankara after he finished Sakarya Elementary and Cumhuriyet middle school. Because he could not stand Ankara any more, he started to work as a clerk at an insurance company in a summer site called Side. He worked there until his manager of the site asked a gardener to kill his cat. He never could get over his cat being killed, so he quit his clerk job in 1994. He worked as an interpreter at an export company between 1994-1998.After 25 years, he has retired. He is writing poems, translating poems and he is currently living in Istanbul.
His poetry books:
Harabeler, Yazılı Günler 1992
Ve Kalbim Sular Altında, Yazılı Günler 1996
Karanfil Mesafesi, Avesta yay 2001
Unutulan, Yom Yay 2004
Çölden Hırka, ŞİİRden yay 2006
Katran, artsohp yay 2008
Sen İçerde Uyurken, artshop 2009
Sardunyanın Kehribar Zamanı, artshop yay. 2010
Gülün Koynuna Düşen, Serendip yay. 2013
Taşa Masal, artshop, 2016
Some of his translation Works:
Three anthologies from collection of Arabic poems: Modern anthology of Arabic poetry, anthology of Arabic Woman and anthology of Arabic love poems. Some poets that he translated are Adonis, Mahmud Derviş, Nazik El Melaike, Nizar Kabbani, Muhammed Bennis, Fetva Tukan, Selim Berakat…
Forgetable
We had started with forgotten shadows
But loves don’t remain as they are, that if you open
The window on the backyard side
Neither the cat nor the child, even if you call
From a nearby ruin
We’ve forgotten within the forgotten shadows
On the mattress that we sat legs crossed
We dwindle away as far as we look into time
Opening to yard all day long.
Forgotten within the forgotten yard
Muddy flowers, beak of the birds
Bloody eyed pomegranate and me
In an ancient city
I don’t tidy up your forgotten nudity
From my kid bed anymore
Are you there?
From the ruin standing within me,
Wish you call once again
In Memorial of An Old Used Death
Rosebay flavor left
I don’t know from which love it’s remained
You have taken the water which I wash my face
You sowed those wild weed
They strangle the rose in my heart.
While can’t get wind of wind in sweat
Sea left its last drop
In the front of the wall,
It has got pale
What it used to mean in the poem
That; has to be looked up again
Şiirler: Metin Fındıkçı
Translated by Tuğrul Asi Balkar & O. Nuri Peşkircioğlu
Warm welcome for a guest author:Vincent Czyz
Vincent Czyz received an MA in comparative literature from Columbia University, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University. He is the author of the collection Adrift in a Vanishing City, and is the recipient of the 1994 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction and two fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts. The 2011 Truman Capote Fellow at Rutgers University, his short stories and essays have appeared in Shenandoah, AGNI, TheMassachusetts Review, Tampa Review, Quiddity, Louisiana Literature, Logos Journal, New England Review,Boston Review, Sports Illustrated, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Although he has traveled the world and spent some ten years in Istanbul, Turkey, he now lives and works in New Jersey with his wife, Neslihan.
MONET IN MOURNING
Vincent Czyz
In love not with scenery but with distance, light is a stranger in this universe, a traveler passing through at 186,000 miles per second. On its way elsewhere, it flashes off the ruffled surfaces of lakes and the snow-settled slopes of mountains. It vaults in shards off the glassy highrises of cities and in handfuls off the windows of remote farmhouses. It retreats, at its absurd velocity, from the mirrored eyes of nocturnal animals back into night. Mostly, however, it hurtles by unobstructed and, even less fortunate than the shark, remains in motion forever. Unlike sound, it has no fear of the vacuum. Masquerading sometimes as a particle, sometimes as a wave, it passes through the void as if it were truly empty.
It doesn’t occur to us, as we turn a page of the morning paper or smile across the room at one another or stop to admire the cut clarity of a diamond, that light’s foremost desire, from the instant of its creation—whether in the fused heart of a star, the sulfurous head of a match, or the glowing filament of a bulb—is to escape. While physicists preoccupy lifetimes mapping the details of its movement, measuring its various properties, and assigning it a place in their theories, its vanishing presence is perhaps most appreciated by painters who, over the centuries, have devoted themselves to reproducing its effects on canvas.
Even before the sun has lifted into view, light begins to shift the mood and cast of a city. With the grit-black of the sky receding a grain at a time, this is the hour when a painter might be unpacking his brushes and setting up an easel on a riverbank. Each solid thing—the copper façade of the train station, the trees guarded by low iron fences, the fire escapes zigzagging across the faces of tenements, the tenements themselves—slides away from the placental dark in which each of them shares an unbroken existence. From dawn to midday to the onset of night again, nothing changes but the light and yet, as any painter can tell you, a hundred cities have flickered in and out of existence.
This might also have been the hour of mourning in 1879 when, after an all-night vigil at the bedside of his wife, Claude Monet realized that not even Camille’s death could quell his obsession with light and its infinitely varying hues. Kneeling beside her body, he stared with burning eyes as sunlight found itself unwittingly caught in the trap of the bedroom. He watched Camille’s face assume unfamiliar and unforeseen aspects. His eye was entranced by her tragic temple as he would later refer to it, by the color degradation that death had just left on the motionless face, by the blues and grays that deepened like creeping shadows.
That, Monet concluded, is what I had come to.
No better than a pendulum whose arc was determined by Newton’s laws, he was merely a collection of reflexes set in motion by the colors of his dead wife’s face. Appalled at himself, at how thoroughly he’d become rooted in pigment, in the smell of the oily paints and the coarse surface of the canvas, he likened himself to an animal turning round a millstone.
Does it come as any surprise that he painted her on her deathbed? Although a bonnet covered her head, although she was bundled in bedding and veiled with a gossamer shroud, her husband insisted on cocooning her in color as well. Sun enters his portrait from an unseen window on Camille’s left, flaring some of the bedding into yellow, while she herself, her eyebrows raised almost inquisitively, is submerged in the somber blues and grays that had taken hold of Monet’s retina. His vision is undistorted by the lensing effect of tears. Museum docents and art critics point to this portrait, Camille sur son lit de mort, and speak of it as another frame in Monet’s lifelong study of what lay between his eye and what he despaired of ever adequately rendering in paint.
Light and its shifts attracted Monet the way a magnetic field might draw an iron soul; light as tempered by degrees of shadow on a milieu of objects; light divided by time. Did it matter to Monet whether light was particle or wave? Did it matter to him that neither he nor anyone else ever actually saw an object, that the eye is capable only of gathering the light fleeing innumerable surfaces? The likely answer in both cases is no. Instinctively, however, Monet may have felt that the emptiness he struggled with every day—always there no matter how much paint he squeezed from tubes—would have been unbearable if it were not for the reliable visits of a radiant stranger.
Warm welcome for a guest author:Vincent Czyz
Vincent Czyz received an MA in comparative literature from Columbia University, and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers University. He is the author of the collection Adrift in a Vanishing City, and is the recipient of the 1994 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for Short Fiction and two fellowships from the NJ Council on the Arts. The 2011 Truman Capote Fellow at Rutgers University, his short stories and essays have appeared in Shenandoah, AGNI, TheMassachusetts Review, Tampa Review, Quiddity, Louisiana Literature, Logos Journal, New England Review,Boston Review, Sports Illustrated, Poets & Writers, and many other publications. Although he has traveled the world and spent some ten years in Istanbul, Turkey, he now lives and works in New Jersey with his wife, Neslihan.
MONET IN MOURNING
Vincent Czyz
In love not with scenery but with distance, light is a stranger in this universe, a traveler passing through at 186,000 miles per second. On its way elsewhere, it flashes off the ruffled surfaces of lakes and the snow-settled slopes of mountains. It vaults in shards off the glassy highrises of cities and in handfuls off the windows of remote farmhouses. It retreats, at its absurd velocity, from the mirrored eyes of nocturnal animals back into night. Mostly, however, it hurtles by unobstructed and, even less fortunate than the shark, remains in motion forever. Unlike sound, it has no fear of the vacuum. Masquerading sometimes as a particle, sometimes as a wave, it passes through the void as if it were truly empty.
It doesn’t occur to us, as we turn a page of the morning paper or smile across the room at one another or stop to admire the cut clarity of a diamond, that light’s foremost desire, from the instant of its creation—whether in the fused heart of a star, the sulfurous head of a match, or the glowing filament of a bulb—is to escape. While physicists preoccupy lifetimes mapping the details of its movement, measuring its various properties, and assigning it a place in their theories, its vanishing presence is perhaps most appreciated by painters who, over the centuries, have devoted themselves to reproducing its effects on canvas.
Even before the sun has lifted into view, light begins to shift the mood and cast of a city. With the grit-black of the sky receding a grain at a time, this is the hour when a painter might be unpacking his brushes and setting up an easel on a riverbank. Each solid thing—the copper façade of the train station, the trees guarded by low iron fences, the fire escapes zigzagging across the faces of tenements, the tenements themselves—slides away from the placental dark in which each of them shares an unbroken existence. From dawn to midday to the onset of night again, nothing changes but the light and yet, as any painter can tell you, a hundred cities have flickered in and out of existence.
This might also have been the hour of mourning in 1879 when, after an all-night vigil at the bedside of his wife, Claude Monet realized that not even Camille’s death could quell his obsession with light and its infinitely varying hues. Kneeling beside her body, he stared with burning eyes as sunlight found itself unwittingly caught in the trap of the bedroom. He watched Camille’s face assume unfamiliar and unforeseen aspects. His eye was entranced by her tragic temple as he would later refer to it, by the color degradation that death had just left on the motionless face, by the blues and grays that deepened like creeping shadows.
That, Monet concluded, is what I had come to.
No better than a pendulum whose arc was determined by Newton’s laws, he was merely a collection of reflexes set in motion by the colors of his dead wife’s face. Appalled at himself, at how thoroughly he’d become rooted in pigment, in the smell of the oily paints and the coarse surface of the canvas, he likened himself to an animal turning round a millstone.
Does it come as any surprise that he painted her on her deathbed? Although a bonnet covered her head, although she was bundled in bedding and veiled with a gossamer shroud, her husband insisted on cocooning her in color as well. Sun enters his portrait from an unseen window on Camille’s left, flaring some of the bedding into yellow, while she herself, her eyebrows raised almost inquisitively, is submerged in the somber blues and grays that had taken hold of Monet’s retina. His vision is undistorted by the lensing effect of tears. Museum docents and art critics point to this portrait, Camille sur son lit de mort, and speak of it as another frame in Monet’s lifelong study of what lay between his eye and what he despaired of ever adequately rendering in paint.
Light and its shifts attracted Monet the way a magnetic field might draw an iron soul; light as tempered by degrees of shadow on a milieu of objects; light divided by time. Did it matter to Monet whether light was particle or wave? Did it matter to him that neither he nor anyone else ever actually saw an object, that the eye is capable only of gathering the light fleeing innumerable surfaces? The likely answer in both cases is no. Instinctively, however, Monet may have felt that the emptiness he struggled with every day—always there no matter how much paint he squeezed from tubes—would have been unbearable if it were not for the reliable visits of a radiant stranger.
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Editors Choice:İLHAN KEMAL
(13 September 1968, Adana / Turkey),
İlhan Kemal is a Turkish poet. He took place in many literary magazines, fanzines and poetry anthologies such as Akatalpa, Akköy, Aşkın E Hali, Bahçe, Budala, Dize, Eliz, Etken, Heves, İmgelem Çocukları, Kavram Karmaşa, Kurşunkalem, Kum, Lodos, Lül Sanat, Mühür, Mortaka, Patika, Papirüs, Şiiri Özlüyorum, Şiirsaati, Ücra, Varlık, Yeniyazı and Yom Sanat with his poems, literary analyses, essays, interviews and theoretical articles.
In addition, Poems are translated into English, published in many foreign magazines and has appeared in the anthology.
He has never been like those sitting and writing in their corners. He’s always been an activist figure. He organized poetry activities. He created plans for several organizations to take place and led many of them. His works have been mentioned in many literary analyses and literary criticism essays. He was suggested as one of the contemporary poets whose poetry will be carried into future by some literature circles. He published “Mağmum Poetry Manifest” which reflects his sense of poetry.
He participated in foundation and management of two literary magazines: Lül Sanat and Children of Imagination.
He still draws attention with his unique poetic style.
Published Works:
1- Mağmum (2006) – Kora Yayın
2- Hiç, Kimsenin Bildiği (2007) – Başak Yayınları
3- Ücra Söz (Ağustos 2009) – Hayal Yayınları
4- Değişik (Haziran 2011) – Mühür Yayınları
5-Yağmur Konalgası (Eylül 2012) – Kanguru Yayınları
6-Beni Güzlerimden Öp (Mart 2014) – Mühür Yayınları
7- Ağır Çıvgın (Mayıs 2016) – Mühür Yayınları
Moving Away / İlhan Kemal
the rose migrated from the house –host to loneliness
were the pictures taken down as well from the wall of the temple?
this is cuneiform utterance. pain of existence. a bleeding nail.
the world loses its half if the spirit of age is wounded
this is talk of frame stain. nightmare of thing. fear of matter
leave the baby shoe on the threshold, only one
perhaps it will be possible to grow for a return slowly
horse shoe and evil eye talisman on that door
no, they shall not be touched
beauties shall not wait in silence
like a distant love
dream pilgrim is tired during the life of the road
how rain-mannered is this nomadic essence
while rain drops are petting the voice of homeless childhood
his friends shall look after his discarded bike
with the eyes of the ivy in the yard
being purled on a canvas of its own foreignness,
loneliness isn’t adapted but remains a foreigner
in a carnival of familiar strangers
something called return awaits right over our bedside
Translated From Turkish: Betül AKDAĞ
THE EDGE / İlhan Kemal
I’ve found a place. I’ve reached myself.
Earth is a shadow of an old olive tree
A bird’s salute, a francolin I suppose, perhaps a pigeon
It is two pieces of cloud passing over my chest necking each other
Getting wet to my marrow through whistle of a wind
Misting of a flower on my skin
Greetings of far slopes for no reason
When I say hush, a fiery river is
The flow of a delicacy straight into me, through my heart
On me the days cheer on this edge!
I know the life is a venue dropped in
Yet, if only death wouldn’t remember me, like a forgotten life of a gravel
I wish I could stay here, centenaries would chant to me.
Translated From Turkish: Betül AKDAĞ
Editors Choice:Ulaş Başar Gezgin
Ulaş Başar Gezgin is a poet, writer, academic and translator who has so far published 14 books including an opera libretto. He is from Istanbul (date of birth: 1978) but works in Asia (since 2003: currently Vietnam, and in Thailand and Malaysia in the past) which are constant sources of inspiration for his poetry. He had experiences in New Zeland, Australia and Latin America which broadened his artistic and literary views. His works have been translated to a number of languages including English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Russian, Georgian, Vietnamese, Thai and Azerbaijani. He pens literary works, journalistic pieces, academic papers and lyrics as well as translations to Turkish to promote non-Turkish poets to Turkish readers.
He started to write at an early age and his first published poem appeared on Darüşşafaka literature magazine in 1993. His first books were a collection of his awarded stories and a translation of Octavio Paz’s poetry-in-prose work both of which were published in 2000. He strongly believes that poetry has had a permanent seat in his life since his childhood and he is more than happy to age with poetry.
For some of his books please check: https://www.amazon.com/
For his poetry in various languages and translations please check: http://gezginulas.blogspot.com/
For more information about his bio: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ulasbasargezgin
E-mail: ulasbasar@gmail.com
For Those Who Will Sail Across the Oceans
A palm extends her neck towards the ocean
So that her shadow would fall on seaweeds, on fish.
The lands are narrow for her or
The ocean is immense, much more immense.
If the salty water won’t cool my branches,
Let my head touch the dunes and not the clouds.
Let my leaves fall on blue depths
Rather than decaying in the soil.
Let a sailor disperse my seeds, at first
On the deck washed ceaselessly by salty water
Let him carry me to unexplored lands, never seen before
So that my shadow may cover all the oceans.
When one day, an ax of a human hand will slide
Into my truck that was stretched due to my extending for a long time,
Let my inside be comrade to the depths,
Out of me, a long, a long cooling.
You too extended your neck like that palm,
Even if your shadow fall on other lands, other people,
Your country will always welcome your roots,
Even if your blue voyage lasts for a millenium.
Ulas Basar Gezgin, HCMC, Vietnam, 15.03.2009
Soaking Wet
The air is dark, there is nothing in the sky resembling the stars.
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
Climbing the stairs slowly, while looking back.
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
I remember her call, not sure whether it was a dream or not.
It is raining crazy outside.
Letting my body free fall to the floor.
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
I knew it from the trembling of your hands.
The rain drops ooze through my clothes, not easing for a second.
Are those pouring out from your tongue also wet?
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
Leave me to the wind, leave me to the temporary vermilion of the horizon.
Dew too should be considered as rain.
Whichever direction you open your hands to, whichever face you shout to
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
From one ladder to another, this is life… In between we see the plains…
It is obvious that this coat is good-for-nothing.
Where do you find all these words one after the another?
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
They get on the bus, they walk… People who are tired of yesterday, from the day before
yesterday, from the previous week…
My forehead is once more wet … I got perspiration.
The caterpillars will make slapdash noises again.
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
Think of the children going to school… Everywhere is dark…
Think of how they will get dry, when, the books and notebooks soaked with the rain water.
It bends and curves in the fire, the rubber boots of the class.
I am soaking wet from head to toe.
Which side are you talking about, which side?.. I cannot find it where I put them.
To your wet eyelashes, to your protective eyebrows, to your hands rushing to the puddles
Is it because you, I and our hands are soaking wet
the entire universe is soaking wet?
Written by Ulaş Başar Gezgin (2005)
Translated into English by Ali Rıza Arıcan (6th September 2011)
Warm Welcome For A Guest Poet:Javier Alvarado
Javier Alvarado was born in Santiago de Veraguas, Panama in 1982. His poetry appears in many Latino american Poetry Antologies: Vértigo de los Aires, Mexico 2007, Poésie Panaménne du XXe siécle, Ginebra, Switzerland, Poesía Latinoamericana Hoy, Mexico 2011, Barcos sobre el agua natal, Spain-Mexico, 2012. He gave poetry readings at Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, England, Guatemala, El Salvador, Scotland, Colombia, Uruguay and Canada. In 2007 he went to the United Kingdom and gave the conference El Canal de Panama en la Literatura Panameña at Canning House and in 2009. He won a Literary Residence in Cove Park Foundation at Scotland, United Kingdom. He won the National Young Poetry of Panama Gustavo Batista Cedeño in 2000, 2004 and 2007, the Pablo Neruda Prize in 2004 (he went to Chile to know the Pablo Neruda’s houses.) In 2007 he won the Stella Sierra Poetry Prize, in 2010 he won the First Prize of the Juegos Florales de Leon, Nicaragua with the book Ojos parlantes para estaciones de ceguera and he won an Honor Mention in Casa de las Americas of Cuba in 2010 with the book Carta Natal al Pais de los Locos (Poeta en Escocia). In 2011 he won the Premio Centroamericano de Literatura Rogelio Sinan with the book Balada sin ovejas para un pastor de huesos. In 2011 he won the International Poetry Award Rubén Dario of Nicaragua, Prized Book: El mar que me habita. In 2012 he won the International Poetry Award Nicolás Guillén, Mexico-Cuba; Prized Book: Viaje Solar de un tren hacia la noche de Matachín . He published: Tiempos de Vida y Muerte (2001), Caminos Errabundos y otras Ciudades (2002); Poemas para caminar bajo un paraguas (2003) ; Aquí, todo tu cuerpo escrito; Por ti no pasa nunca el Tiempo (y otros poemas al espejo) (2005); No me cubre de edad la Primavera, Soy mi Desconocido. (2008), Carta Natal al País de los Locos, México (2011), Ojos Parlantes para estaciones de ceguera, Nicaragua (2011), Balada sin ovejas para un pastor de huesos, (2011).
EMILY WITH HER BEAUTIFUL FIRMAMENT
(translation by Margaret Randall)
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair...
Dickinson
Emily look at the patio garden beyond the walls
I want to take hold territory where the pilgrim’s staff moves
where the shadow encounters its twin
and where it says:
Poet
come into my garden, brother, where there is a beautiful firmament.
By day she picks up her sewing thread.
With each step she prunes the flower’s perfection
she plants a ballad
in every petal shed by bedrooms
where the mausoleum to beauty rises
in eyes where swallows of blood drink fire.
When she resists the ocean of souls
her father the reverend commends her
to the reverence of light
and the waters
of God’s flock,
like a healthy sheep
who departs its fields in love
to diminishing birds and bells
it is the retelling of one story after another,
the wife in purple and white
where sun penetrates like a goat in a yawn
of the territorial suns of our lives and of all lives.
Planting a poem right there,
a pocket verse
the silver chronicle
where shadow encounters its twin
and where she says:
Poet
Come into my garden, brother, where there’s a beautiful firmament.
(translation by Margaret Randall)
Editors Choice:Nihat Özdal
Born in 1984 Halfeti
Poet, museum curator and coach in his own surf academy.
He held installation exhibitions in Turkey and many cities of the world.He interrogated the time and hope notions through various objects.
His poems being published in domestic and overseas magazines from 2002. ''Google'dan Önce'' (Before Google) published in 2010. He rewarded in 2008 Memet Fuat Young Poem Awards and 2011 Homeros Poem Awards as praiseworthy.In september 2012 “Kanat İzleri” (Wing Traces) and in september 2015 “Düğmeler” (Buttons) published. In 2016 he won the '' Altın Defne Poem Award''.
His books translated to Russian, Italian, Kurdish, Arabic, Syriac, Serbian, Macedonian, Tatar, Crotian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Ukrainian, Uzbek.
Google and Isaac
The astonishment in the farmer’s eyes turned into fear. He never thought
that Isaac could kill someone. What a horrible thing this was. The
excitement in his movements was approaching that fearsome end instead
of sending it away."
Onat Kutlar
/1/
I wanted them to know, Isaac:
The One who persists on being wet,
The One who huddles with
oneself,
If I get lost at the noon of anxious time,
If I take a few steps,
they find me.
/2/
I tossed the dice, Isaac;
My defeat is the roads I could not
take
/3/
When the sky is shot,
Olive posed from a dream.
I will become branches for you
you will make me fly.
Smile,
Isaac will be the bride of the
night.
/4/
Being the morning is
intrinsic to her,
Who come
late,
Who doesn’t come
I, me,
myself
/5/
I was cross.
I am not the last drop flooding from the
pot.
You asked;
morning cafes of Sivas, Isaac
that is me
who is a poet in the fire.
/6/
Draw
yourself.
The tip of your wing touched the
black.
/7/
Let there be new pages, Euphrates
willow, two steps after me,
Settle on the tip,
Don’t be
scared
They cannot shoot
you,
Shore, thickets, night,
blind,
fly from the tip
fly
Isaac.
Maybe they will
shoot
Editors Choice:Neval Savak
She was born in İzmir,Turkey. She published her poetry book called “The Black Solace” in April 2016. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines such as Silgi, Şiiristan, Sakız Fanzin, Meyus, Sunak, Tmolos, Nif Sanat, Eliz, Dikili Ekin, Yaşam Sanat, Kirpi Edebiyat, Kültür Sanat, Kaybolan Defterler. She lives in İzmir.
You’ve no idea
an empty boat
at sea
or a swing
o your heart your heart
in the twilight of the sky
it’s history with hidden lines
your face is moon’s shame
beating on the blackness of lakes
making me die a thousand deaths
it’s lighthouse of my night
ah if i say ah
my wasting life’s
never knocked
door is your hands
me, i’m mad
you, you’ve no idea
Neval Savak
English Translation by Erkan Karakiraz
the diary of a woman
-how sad must be those lakes-
perhaps a few leaves would be falling
out of our loneliness
perhaps our hands are like water lily
we greet each other in the autumn
while sensing the smell of departure
of those lakes of sadness
we would not hear anymore
the festivities of the bay windows
even we would be all ears
we tend to forget the existence
of the streaming rivers, shooting stars
the morning of the smell of soap
of the laundry with the smell of soap
we would be shot at our eyes
as we are plunging into the world saying it is a fate
we are outcast kid
of the rogue rains
our mind used to know the blue
and on top of that
that laughter with a smell of a rose
gently bending over the water
such kisses of the touch of a bird
just before there is a rupture
the diary of a woman
in it she holds her tongue
Neval Savak
English Translation by Mesut Şenol
Warm Welcome For A Guest Poet:Jacquelyn Pope
Jacquelyn Pope is a writer and translator. Her book of poems, Watermark (2005), is published by Marsh Hawk Press.
She is winner of Marsh Hawk Press’s First Annual Poetry Prize, 2004
Emphasis Mine
LOST declares the Highlander’s Land of Lincoln plate,
now canting from a single rusted bolt. This I know,
for this I am: fish out of water, ever out
of sorts, foreign-born and foreign-hearted.
Stuck now, in the here-and-now, as the world turns
and turns away. Marking time in the lowest
of these low lands, in lots drawn and Chemlawned,
where the world spreads sprawled and blind, gorges
on blacktop. Its houses settle cheek-by-jowl, secured
by Rustic Wood and Heritage Plastic, needled
by evergreens, the roofs strafed by wind and jet fuel.
Here in the grasp of its grid of days, in seasons
detailed by dammed ice or by peeling paint,
I go skidding past turns, out of true, tracked
through the muck of its weedrows and gumstick,
in the wrack of my failures of nerve.
Out of Bounds
Summer’s shadows start me
thinking blind: how blue
drags black behind it, dark
and ruined, rising like a bruise
played for time.
From the swing of summer
I wished for a door,
a trap, some plunge between
the endless brush of sea-
on-sky. I wished
for your old blue window
in its peeled black frame,
a passage to gentle you through.
I wished for the song
that would summon you
out of shadow, camphor, steam.
I wished on a trick for turning back
but of course it never came.
There was only everything
between us, stuck in the slur
of love and lost connection,
out in the blue, endlessly vanishing.
published in -upstreet journal, Massachusetts.
Editors Choice: Salih Bolat
Salih Bolat was born in Adana in 1956 and completed his elementary through high school education there. He graduated from the Department of Social Politics at the University of Gazi (1980). He completed his doctorate at Hacettepe University. At some Universities, Depertment of Cinema-TV in İstanbul and Ankara studied about scriptwriting, creative writing. He was on the editorial board of the journals Koza, Petek, Yapıt and Yarın. He has published books of essays, poetry and criticism. His first literary work was his short story entitled Çöpçü/Garbage Man published in the newspaper Yeni Adana (1975). He has also been published in journals like Yeni Olgu, Türkiye Yazıları and Düşler. In his socially oriented poetry, he depicts the individual’s distress and pain, and the details of life. He has an imagist and lyrical style. His books of poetry: Yaşanan/What Is Lived (1983), Bir Afişin Önünde/In Front of a Poster (1986), Sınır ve Sonsuz/Limit and Infinity (1988), Karşılaşma/Encounter (1993), Uzak ve Eski/Distant and Old (1995), Gece Tanıklığı/Witness to the Night (1999), Açılmış Kanat/Spread Wings (2004) and Kanıt/Evidence (2006).
THE LAKE
at night
feeling secure, we went off to our beds
but the lake stayed alone in darkness
ı wish she would talk with the summer grasses
and would listen to the song of hot herbs
ı wish falling stars would stop her worries
and she wouldn’t feel cold
at night
we fell into a deep asleep
the mountains were covered with distances
but the lake was still awake
she was wandering alone among the bulrushes
ı prepared a bed for her
ı wish she would come to us.
(Translated by Tozan Alkan)
THE CHASE
every morning
a bullet wedges in my sleeplessness
i awaken a dead soldier in my bed
beard of blood wrapped around the wind
i get up to clean my shaving mirror
why this glassy stain of night?
i wipe it but it grows bigger
will my face fade in this dark?
Translated by Yusuf Eradam and Michael Gurian
http://salihbolat.com/
A Warm Welcome For A Guest Poet: Ndue Ukaj
Ndue Ukaj (1977) is Albanian writer, publicist and literary critic. He was member of several editorials literary. He has also been editor of the magazine for art, culture and society "Identity" that was published in Pristina. Ukaj is included in several anthologies of poetry, in Albanian, and other languages. He has published five books, including “Godo is not coming”, which won the national award for best book of poetry published in 2010 in Kosovo. He has also won the award for best poems in the International Poetry Festival in Macedonia. Hi won also PRIZES 2013: The International Best Poets, Translators, Critics, and Poetry Magazines, Selections of Poems, IPTRC in Chines and Creativity prizes' in Naji Naaman's Literary Prizes 2016.
His poems and texts are translated into English, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Finish, Swedish, Turkish, Chinese.
Ukaj is member of Swedish PEN.
Utopia
Everything is different, in the horizon the Sun is crumbled
The crumbles remained on the earth’s heart like triumphant arrows.
We can’t recognize the colors through the wind caressing the memory
We do not read poetry in the universe of foolishness
Where relations between darkness and light
Appear just like relations between the wall and thought.
Behind is played the surprising game, just like before
Birds are falling in the ground, just like in times when hell was written,
Oh God, everything has changed,
At a time when a small fence is darkening our our big eyes.
The moon finds a path through mummy hands remaining like arrows
towards the sky
And the sun dissolving just like a candle through tired eyes
Who can’t see anything in the blue sky, except a small cloud
A cloud darkening everything
Therefore vision is coiled in space
Just like the wind creating its avalanche
Then many faces appear.
At a night, when everything is different,
Containing inside the borders within your head
When you feet walk through illusions
And squeeze their bad dreams
For the time that isn’t
For the time that wasn’t
For the time that will not come
For the time that goes with the wind.
Utopia struggling against reality
Her dreams hiding at the corner of secrets
Are swallowed
Noah’s Arc
Noah’s Arc was not emptied even when the rainbow scintillated over the
sea
Winds stopped and the sea slept.
She was not emptied, even when the white dove flew before her
And in narrow doors were appeared the passionate, to feel
All colors of brightness right away.
She fights while drunken with a storm,
The rain of life falling non stop
With evil men who have ruined the soil...
Since when drunken people were overwhelmed by the desire to grapple through the colors of rainbow,
Trust me, peace was not laid over us even a dove appeared in a blue sky
When desire engulfed you to become drunk in warm lips,
To die there and preserve the instant of drunkenness in eternity
Night fell again; rainbow disappeared in the orbit of darkness,
Just like an unknown after a great hill.
And darkness invaded our eyes, the same as Eve’s overwhelming desire
for the prohibited apple in the tree of wisdom,
Oh God,
Wouldn’t you think that taste is lost for lives’ fruit?
Since the fight between the arch and the storm
(Translated from Albania by Peter Tase)
"Poetry is a beautiful and a human calling, always clinking, with an upper language. It’s a pleasure every time I publish poetry, especially when they are dedicated to other cultures."Ndue Ukaj
Editors choice:Metin Cengiz
Metin Cengiz: poet and writer (b. 3 May 1953, Göle). He attended to Göle primary School (1964), Kars Alparslan High School (1972) and graduated from Erzurum Atatürk University, Faculty of Basic Sciences and Foreign Languages, Department of French (1977). During his years at the university, he worked as a civil officer at the Turkish Statistical Institute for a short time (1973). Meanwhile, he completed his studies at Marmara University, Department of French. After working as a teacher in Muş, he resigned from his duty, returned back to İstanbul and began to work as a proofreader, editor and translator at publishing houses. He wrote particularly on the problems of poetry in the reviews Hurriyet Gösteri, Varlık and in various newspapers. He established the Şiirden Publishing House in 2005, in collaboration with his friends, to publish poems and essays concerning poetry theory. He won the Behçet Necatigil Poetry Award in 1966 with his book Şarkılar Kitabı (The Book of Songs), Melih Cevdet Anday Poetry Award in 2010 with his book Bütün Şiirleri 1 (Collected poems 1), Bütün Şiirleri 2 (collected poems 2) and Tudor Arghezi İnternational Poetry Award in 2011 (Romanya). He is a member of Writers Syndicate of Turkey, the Association of Turkish PEN Writers and the Turkish Authors Association. His poems are translated into several languages such as French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Bosnian, Russian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Azerbaijani, Serbian, and Kurdish. His selected poems are published in French with the title Apres le Tempete et Autres Poemes (2006, Harmattan). Levant Magazine published his eight poems along with their Turkish under the title “Divan” (2009). In Romania his poems are published in magazines Convorbiri Literare and Poesia (2011). He edited the Anthology titled Çağdaş 17 Türk Şairi is published by Harmattan Publishing (2009). He organized several international festivals in Yalova, Çanakkale and Nicosia. Now he has been advising Eskişehir International Poetry Festival. He attended numerous International festivals and symposiums. His poetry benefits from tradition by challenging it, reflects the realities of the modern world and tries to elaborate them in dept with the realities of life as reflected from his internal world. Being known with his articles on poetry in his early period, the poet has become one of the pioneers of the period after 1980, with his theoretical articles and discussions on poetry. Some of these articles were published in a book titled Şiirin Gücü (The Power of Poetry, 1993)
POETRY: Bir Tufan Sonrası (After A Deluge, 1988), Büyük Sevişme (The Great Love, 1980), Zehirinde Açan Zambak (The Lilly that Bloom in its Poison, 1991), İpek’a (To İpek, 1993), Şarkılar Kitabı (The Books of Songs, 1995), Gençlik Çağı (Juvenille Years, 1998), Aşk İlahileri&Günümüze Hüzzamlar (Hymnes Of Love &The Hüzzam Compositions Today, 2005), Özgürlük Şiirleri (poems of freedom), Bütün Şiirleri 1 (Collected poems 1), Bütün Şiirleri 2 (Collected poems 2), İmgeler Benim Yurdum (2011) (Images are my home).
ESSAY-CRITICISM-STUDY: Şiirin Gücü (The Pover of Poetry, 1993; second edition 2006), 1923-1953 Toplumcu Gerçekçi Şiir (The Socialist-Realist Poetry between 1923-1953, 2000), Modernleşme ve Modern Şiirimiz (Modernism and Our Modern Poery, 2002), Şiir, Din ve Cinsellik (Poetry, Religion and Sexuality, 2005), Nâzım’dan 70’li Yıllara Türk Şiirine Eleştirel Bir Bakış (A Critical Essay on Turkish Poetry from Nâzım to 70’s, 2005), Şiir, Biçim, Biçem, Şiirin Teorik Sorunları (The Poetry, Forme, Style – Theoretical Problems of Poetry, 2005), Şiir, Dil, Şiir Dili ve Şiirsel Anlam (Poetry, Language, Language of Poetry and Poetic Meaning, 2006), Küreselleşme, Postmodernizm ve Edebiyat (Globalisation, Postmodernism and Literature, 2007), İmge Nedir? (What is image?), Kültür ve Şiir (Culture and poetry, 2010),Felsefe ve Şiir (Philosophy and poetry, 2010), Şiire ve Hayata Dair Denemeler (2011) (Essays on Poetry and Life), Cemal Sureya poetry (2012), Thought of poetry in Plato and Aristotle (2012).
INTERWIEW: Hayat, Edebiyat, Siyaset-Ahmet Oktay ile Dünden Bugüne (Life, Literature, Politics – with Ahmet Oktay from Yesterday to Today, 2005).
AT TIMES
At times comes someone
Settles down into my heart
Surrounding my whole body
The iron protecting me melts
Utters words I’ve never heard
Telling me about myself
Whisks me far away
Upsetting my world
No, this is not the only thing i want to explain
This is someone else or you perhaps
But i understand in the end
I am the traveler of myself
Metin Cengiz
© Translated by Pınar Besen
DESCRIPTION TO LOVE
How many ships I have seen in these lands sinking
Passangers lost their sea
And fishermen racing with fish
How many anguish and sorrow
The unlucky people grow up
Suckle with their blood hunger and thirst
Tired but happy like a child.
Spells have I seen stops desire
Spell that turns life car without brake
I have listened stories whose wind lean against bells
I never forget it seems a contagious illness anymore
And troublesome like the wars easily told.
But I have not seen something like love in these lands
It throws people into roads barefoot
It cripples
Metin Cengiz
© Translated by Müesser Yeniay
poems are published at:(Mediterranean Poetry)
http://www.odyssey.pm/?p=2669
A Warm Welcome For A Guest Poet: Abhijit Bera
Abhijit Bera has no introduction apart from his poetry. Just to mention that he is an Indian poet and writer. Two major poetry publications, “The Dead Funeral” (2012) and “Carnival Birds” (2016) both in Bengali.
Exile / Abhijit Bera
Give the deportation
till death.
Here, the gospel
Until the last breath
I won’t ask for a rain bath
And won’t ask for any night of storm
though in the Opening of windows
gust of wind struck
I’ll close my eyes and ears, a camel will sit down on the bed.
Now, take this dark well
Throw me in and remember
those compulsive gospels
"Till death” ...
Until the body turns blue
I don’t wish any life…
(From the Book “Carnival Birds” 2016)
Beyond Silver Linings / Abhijit Bera
There is no room in this town to make love
We are beyond the boundaries of the city, across the Silver Lining
Sat down under a night...
Stars across the horizon dips
Blue Birds in the hollow of chilling silence.
We do not have a home
In this universe, night falling universe...
There is no word on the earth
We do not touch each other, neither moonstruck
We’re just sitting face to face without a blink
Our eyes are like a freezing death
Haven’t we died?
Aren’t we dying?
Won’t we die?
How long can we be baked in this cold night
in each other’s warmth?
And for how long our eyes be comforters to us?
How many times our shadows are born
How many times the moon set down
We didn’t account for any loss
Never count for any charity
Only in this vast wilderness of the night
as if two fascinating candle-
are melting in the heat of its own.
Came so far -
just
to make love.
(From the Book “Carnival Birds” 2016)
About Turkish Literature and Art Magazine
“It is genuinely a great privilege for me to write here as your guest poet.
Poetry is the finest art of all. And running a poetry magazine is the most magical job. The magic of The Turkish Literature and Art Magazine has already crossed the horizon. Hope it’ll continue to make the world a better place through poetry across boundaries because only poetry has the universal appeal.”
Editors Choice:Nazli Eray
Nazli Eray was born in Ankara, Turkey. After attending the English Girls Secondary School, İstanbul Arnavutköy American Girls College, and İstanbul University Faculty of Law, she worked as a translator in the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Promotion. Her first story was entitled “Monsieur Hristo,” written when she was a secondary school student. Her stories started to get published in the review Entity one year later, and in important literary reviews such as Turkish Language, Constitution, Yazko Literature, Demonstration, and Essay starting in 1973. In 1975, her first book, entitled Ay Bayim Ah was published. In 1986, an anthology of her stories was published in Germany. Her stories, plays and novels have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Czech, Urdu, Hindi, Swedish, and Arabic. Her novel Orpheus was published in the US in English in 2006. Her novels The Street of Different Dreams and Orpheus are being translated into Korean, and The Emperor Tea Garden is also currently being translated into English. Nazlı Eray is the founder of the (Turkish) Literary Association, a member of the Turkish Writers’ Union, an honorary faculty member at Iowa University, and a member of PEN International. She has been a columnist in the newspapers Gunes, Cumhuriyet, Radikal, and Aksam. The authors’ stories are included in the elementary school course books in Turkey.
The Map
In one of Ankara’s forgotten streets, there is a narrow, dark bookstore.
I stop by there every now and then to look at the dusty old books. The moldy old books interest me; the smell of dust gets into the back of my throat there, I chat a little with the old bespectacled bookseller, who sits in a corner at a worm-eaten desk , then I go out into the sunny streets again and walk away.
Late one afternoon I went into the bookstore, where the sun rarely penetrates and which has a kind of rich scent all of its own, and was absently looking through the shelves.
The old bookseller, coughing lightly from where he sat, pointed out a bunch of rolled-up papers lying in a corner.
“These just came in,” he said.
I went over.
“What are they?”
“Old maps . . .” I leaned down, picked up one of them and unrolled it. It was a very old map. It showed the long-erased borders of the Ottoman Empire. There was Old Turkish written on it.
“Interesting,” I said.
I unrolled another map and looked at it with interest. Some very unusual islands . . . I couldn’t quite make out where it was.
The bookseller said: “These are some old colonies . . .”
“God, what ocean are these colonies in? I’ve never heard their names before!”
The bookseller said: “These maps are special, they’re interpretative.”
Now I was looking at another map; it was like something from another planet . . . There was Latin America, and Africa, and so forth, but there were several pieces of land I didn’t know. And the writing was very unusual.
“What’s this?”
“This,” said the bookseller, “it’s the world we live in, of course. But interpreted . . . You understand.”
“That they’re interpreted?”
“Yes, they’re specially annotated maps.”
“Really very interesting,” I said. “I’ve never heard of interpretative maps like these before. I wasn’t a great student of geography in school, but I’ve traveled around the world. And I’ve really never seen anything that looked like these pieces of land. I mean look, isn’t that America? But what is that over there, for God’s sake?”
...
Read more: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/the-map#ixzz4JMGwQuBw
© Nazli Eray. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2011 by Robert P. Finn. All rights reserved.
A Warm Welcome For A Guest Poet: Fernando Carrera
Fernando Carrera was born in Guadalajara, México on 1983. He is the author of the poetry collections “Fire Expression” (Mantis Editors-Jalisco Culture Ministry, 2007) and “Where the touch is” (ICA-Conaculta, 2011; “Là où le toucher/ Donde el tacto” second bilingual edition, Mantis Editores-Écrits des Forges- Jalisco Culture Ministry, 2015). He received the National Prize of Literature for Young Writers on 2010. He received honorary mentions in the “Efraín Huerta” National Poetry Prize on 2006, and in the “Nicolás Guillén” International Poetry Prize in 2009. He had received twice the Grant of the Program for Encouragement for Creation and Artistic Development, of the Mexican National Council for Arts and Culture on the periods 2008-2009 and 2010-2011. Books and poems of his authorship have been translated to French, English, Turkish, Greek and Albanian. Poems from his books have been published in several national and international literary and specialized publications, printed and on-line.
Preceding Light
In the water that becomes a shore
in the time that abides
where anxiety transforms itself into a kiss:
I am the still
who consumed the vegetables of dawn
who lies in the quiet structure of night
I am the wing
that covers the climbers of air
the moment that precedes another lightning
(the early vibration)
Something in me within me claims
something made of clay and water with roots
a bit of dust and of the blood of dust
: occasionally air
dying ash
Come and sleep this night
woven in my hands not by my hands
Stare at this void and you shall see my father’s precocious sperm
previous to the first drink of milk
the foremost galaxy
Stare a little longer
: you shall see death
From the book “Fire Expression” (2007)
Water Stairs
I dwelt in the city, the thirst
of awakening the dreams
of what´s humid Memory flows
towards its sun
Desire is
the source of desire
I dwelt in the body The woman
self-made as light on the tip of the day
river that parted
the mountain in two possibilities
: dream
no longer the dream of the just
but that of water
since the freshness of the body
descends upon touch
From the book “Where the touch is” (2011, second edition-2015)
Editors Choice: Muesser Yeniay
MÜESSER YENİAY was born in İzmir, 1984; graduated from Ege University, with a degree in English Language and Literature. She has won several prizes in Turkey including Yunus Emre (2006), Homeros Attila İlhan (2007), Ali Riza Ertan (2009), Enver Gökçe (2013) poetry prizes. Her first book Dibine Düşüyor Karanlık da was published in 2009 and her second book Evimi Dağlara Kurdum is a collection of translation from world poetry. Her latest book Yeniden Çizdim Göğü was published in 2011. She has translated the poems of Persian poet Behruz Kia under the name of Lalelere Requiem. She has translated Selected Poems of Gerard Augustin together with Eray Canberk, Başak Aydınalp, Metin Cengiz (2011). She has also translated Personal Anthology of Michel Cassir together with Eray Canberk and Metin Cengiz (2011). Lately, she has published Contemporary Spanish Anthology with Metin Cengiz and Jaime B. Rosa. Her poems have been translated into English, French, Serbian, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Hindi, Spanish and Romanian. She participated in the poetry festivals in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Israel, Serbia, United States, France and India.
They Say
I ask, dashing into the crowds
“are you my mother?”
I ask a hole of a tree
the birds scattered on the sky
my eyes looking at high
bridges passes over my tongue
over my hands…
I am in a tale
my hair is made of tale
I grasp and press my chest cage
my manhood is melting in my eyes
I ask, dashing into the crowds
they say I must have a mother
like an orange peel
they say..
http://www.thebakerypoetry.com/tag/muesser-yeniay/
Flower Village
I learnt how to stand put
from a flower
Saw no other sun
drank no other water
I recognized my roots as a village
my earth, the sky
Seasons passed above me
a nest of ants, bosom friends
I learnt how to be a flower
solely… solely standing put
https://poethead.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/three-poems-by-muesser-yeniay/
A Warm Welcome For A Guest Poet: Niels Hav
Niels Hav is a full time poet and short story writer living in Copenhagen with awards from The Danish Arts Council. In English he has We Are Here, published by Book Thug, and poetry and fiction in numerous magazines. In his native Danish the author of six collections of poetry and three books of short fiction. His books have been translated into several languages such as English, Arabic, Turkish, Dutch, Farsi and Chinese. Raised on a farm in western Denmark, Niels Hav today resides in the most colourful and multiethnic part of the capital. He has travelled widely in Europe, Asia, North and South America.
In an interview Niels Hav recently says: “I'm trapped in the Latin alphabet. Even if I communicate in English, I'm still isolated from half of the world. How many alphabets are there on our planet? Nobody knows for sure, but alone Chinese, Hindi, Bengali and other Asian alphabets are used by more than one third of the planet's population. And then there is the Arabic alphabet used by a billion. Many Arab and Chinese writers have the advantage over European colleagues, they are able to handle two alphabets. I wish my ignorance wasn't so extensive.”
“…Niels Hav's We Are Here, ... brings to us a selection from the works of one of Denmark's most talented living poets and is all the more welcome for that reason….” * Frank Hugus, The Literary Review
Anger
The dreadful music
in the wind-mantles around the churchyard
a raw night in December, the dead
leaping around screaming in the maltreated trees
with great lumps of anger. Something pent up
that needs to be delivered
to whom?
© Niels Hav Translation Martin Aitken
On the terrace
The old who are soon to die
grow transparent in deck chairs,
but still they listen for traffic.
Going nowhere anymore,
no need to remind me. The skin is dry,
something gnaws inside and wants out.
The heart stops / beats / stops
like a defective second-hand.
In reality, they have arrived now.
Their deceased stand calling
in the shade of the purple beech: My name
disappeared from the phone book.
Alternately, they counterfeit the morning
with dreams and nostalgia.
But still they listen for traffic.
The old who are soon to die
grow transparent in deck chairs.
Someone has put them here.
© Niels Hav
Translation Martin Aitken
"An honor to be your guest. TURKISH LITERATURE AND ART is already impressive, containing so many talented writers and good poems. To edit a magazine is to build a dream castle. I wish you luck in expanding the magazine to a solid platform for Turkish literature and art. We are surrounded by rubbish and empty talk; the task for poetry is to be a genuine defense against nonsense. "
Niels Hav
Editors choice:Zeynep Köylü
the dream of the ruins
in the timelessness of the Gobi Desert
for the ruins...
my face falls away from a far-off mirror
through a piece of the river I gazed at the sky
in the desert I grew larger. the weeds crept onto my hair
in the sleep of horses my shadow grew larger
here there’s no solitude
moments stolen from clocks
get buried in space through a stone’s bottom
my shell breaks. I’m awakened by a stare
the storm stretches out its hands
birds that shudder to have no ocean
turn, speaking of the earth’s cracking
voice underground
with the tongueless moon
I ought to pass right through my body
the ant has taken flight. now it passes over the mountains
a window from you opens out—a rainwater well
makes the roads fit into the hedgehog’s vacant shell
with the earth’s eyes I looked
burned my wings
I should run off to the fields before the sun
now I’m a water slick on the roadside
before seeing words I saw pain
wind within bones
wanders behind the final prayers
red sand
I bury my face
I listen to the sounds of your feet
the skylark stirs —oh lama oh lama
I can’t open my eyes to the dark oh
in the desert I’m getting wet. I linger, a leaf
a map hidden by those who came back from the fire
opens out in my face
the dream of the ruins
time fallen
Poem: Zeynep Köylü
Translated by Mel Kenne and İdil Karacadağ
the key Silent
grey door hugs an endless wall
shadow hides in the back garden Swallow
flies to all that is lonely Prayers
trading looks with christ Not forgetting
what’s in the back garden. Speaking
with her quiet inner self eleni
mirror’s neck broken for as long as you look
pain of writings past Sky
in a far-away sleep now Your eyes
moistening mihrimah Cracked
palms holding shameful sounds Your shoulder
with a wounded istanbul Remembering
her hair eleni
echoing in the stones farewell
eleni holding the key The world
it’s big enough to fit into On her face
a mirror spread She falls
down onto the naked laugh Kisses
the fear stopped at the door Softly
turns the key
the moon’s come closer eleni, the rain’s late
on the wall the birds left loneliness Just
starting to embrace god she got cold hands The rain
she was getting used to then shut her eyes The frog
hopped over the wall Almost mute
when she pushed down into her chest Deep
despondence it hurts
dropping her fingers she counts down
her prayers into infinity In the sun
the star that glows and bleeds The trees
that were buried by the ending To herself
she neared at the window Her mouth
possessed by shattered words A
stare that’s left Counting off
the doors
the key Silent
Poem: Zeynep Köylü
Translated by Mel Kenne and İdil Karacadağ
(The translations by Mel Kenne and İdil Karacadağ are published in Turkish Poetry Today. )
by:Umit Sener Ta
Editors choice:Nisa leyla
Nisa Leyla was born in Iskenderun, Hatay, Turkey in 1972. After completing primary and secondary education in Iskenderun, she graduated from Çukurova University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences in Adana. Later, she held management positions for five years, and served as an English teacher for three years.
In her poetry, she focuses on social issues, inspired by real life. She also writes love poems, socialist and lyric poetries.
Her poems appear in all major magazines in Turkey such as: Varlık, Yasak Meyve, Sincan İstasyonu, Şiirden, Şiiri Özlüyorum, Mühür, Papirüs, Deliler Teknesi, Ihlamur, Kuşak Edebiyat, Kurşun Kalem, Kurgan Edebiyat, Hürriyet Gösteri, Şiir, Yeni Adana, Yaşam Sanat, Patika, Yeni Dönem, Tay, Afrodisyas Sanat, Temrin, Ring Edebiyat, Ekin Sanat, Şiir Saati and more of the same. She also writes short stories and fairytales for children. Her poems have been taken place in: the anthology of Minimal Stories from 252 Authors by Remzi Karabulut, the book of The Gates of Poets by Adil Okay, the anthology of World Poetry Yearbook both in 2013 and 2014 in China, the anthology of Çukurova Poets by Mustafa Emre, the anthology of Literature Platform Yearbook by Turan Karataş, the anthology of Mühür Publishing Yearbook.
In 1991, she has been the third best poet in the Poetry Contest held by Yeni Adana newspaper. One year later, in poetry contest of İskenderun Fest she has been the best poet of the year. Lastly she won the award of Mevlüt Kaplan Literature Contest 2015 .She is also a member of Writers Union of Turkey.
Her books:Dar paçalı dizeler (VERSES WITH NARROW FLARES) (Yazılı Kağıt Publishing, 2014, Ankara) Yokoluş Bir Sözcükse () (Yasak Meyve Publishing, 2015, İstanbul) Sihirli Değnek (Magic Wand) (for children) (Mühür Publishing, 2015, İstanbul)
She has three for children and two for grown-ups poetry files, two files of stories for grown-ups and two fairytale files for children ready to be published.Now she is living in Antalya, Turkey and she is looking for the poetry in the life and the life in the poetry…
hunger
the river you pour into my heart will not cure
nor the mountains you release promising eternity
i have nothing to say to your trees offering candy apples
yet the emptiness inside of me is not filled
a tunnel of sadness
the facts being on their feet the sounds rising
like a wall and i am where hop melts away
like a candle
the word life you knit and the god you drip
from honey will not cure me
the children of my desolate street
have been starving
while trying to forget you
a little you and a little poetry
that's what I am working on
your picture and voice
have come into blossom
I take along your voice
I consult my poetry
what kind of me I should present
really, what am I looking for
beside you
I am kissing my smiling grief
on the forehead...
Editors choice:Dilek Değerli
The Pale Garden
The winter of garden falled on the ground
the broken leaves are on the carpet
steel beaks are on my cold skin.
Oh, are the cracklings in the wall
heard from the garden?
The wine is stil acrid.
The wind that hides in my hair
shaking out desert magic to the sleep
the night with winter fingers
walking around my narrow streets
ice nails of the night are broken
hitting stone angels.
Blind midwife of darkness is embracing
wooden legs of a scarecrow.
The screams of scarecrow are
in the throes of death.
The mirror is still dusty.
Under the curtain of ground
when two naked trees are making love
by their roots
fence of the garden is crying
on the dry sunflower’s neck.
The photographs are being pale
to touch into the distance.
ESCAPING FROM THE PAST
Her ankles’ pain
is from thousands of well depth.
Bed disappears in the room.
Rain doesn’t mind cold,
it eats the talkative grasshoppers.
She becomes drunk, listens with her three ears
she looks out the world with her one eye.
She killes everything that used up,
pouring nitric acid to their hearts.
She wears her feathered helmet
and throws herself to emptiness.
She murmurs her song;
Angels, come out where you are
lightness, tulles, mist are here.
Time has burned and disappeared.
Take my soul from flames,
then evil can waste his time with my body.
Drawings by Dilek Değerli
Editors choice:Reha Yünlüel
http://goo.gl/ksMPd7
skygazing stop / göğe bakma durağı IV" by reha yünlüel, iç/in bachibouzouck, No: 076 [07.2016]
Editors choice:HALİM YAZICI
MY HEART, LISTEN TO THIS LINE
make love to me
with your olive lifetime
leaking from your veins
somehow or other glass and iron
will melt in your eyes.
HALİM YAZICI (d./b. 1954)
Translated by Baki Yiğit
SONG
a rain song is sung
getting so wet
in the rain.
HALİM YAZICI (d./b. 1954)
Translated by Baki Yiğit
Editors choice:Efe Murad
Mega-Disasters / Rendering Subway Ads
hate the unseen because anal beads is white rice
sparks electrify your imagination
your specialty is clever solutions
danger third rail
ours is devising cleverly tailored protection
I like my men perfectly groomed
(seeking overweight men or women)
they don’t know what they do, I’m covered in
everything you need and nothing you don’t need
your specialty follows your dream
didn’t know they know what they do
your mental clarity focusing formula
compensation for up to everyone is the self.
Feathertops In the Cities
you can catch animals in space
eat them right away crushing their heads
everything is sentient and puffs like feathertops
little furry pieces glued to customized brains
hiding fuzzy animal-tits with razor slashing chests.
emanate all your darkness; you’re alone
gather your force and do it: broadcast everything!
show how you eat, how you fuck, and then piss blood
in the fecal mind of swipe machines.
Editors choice:Veysel Çolak
No Time Left
No time left. Don’t be late with the water
the geraniums will wilt the apples we stored
will rot if we don’t bite them soon.
It’s late. You are in a falling plane
it may not give birth to the incubating moment.
Let us undress and enter the dream we started
if we make love the icebergs will melt
our job is to resist, come on, and quicken your heart.
No time left. May the day be plenty, your love a climber
hand in hand with the mountains may the young girls laugh.
The hand from Asia with a single carnation
a robust soil and the exile it leads.
Time is difficult. The shadow of bitterness on the window.
Let the waters gather us and collect us as sand
and later sweep us on a hidden path
as quarrelsome as love let it fall suddenly
from a waterfall increasing its flow
certainly it must have a meaning
in the mouth of a people tired of dreaming.
June 2006, the World
Translated by: Koray Feyiz
http://towerjournal.com/fall_2011/Feyiz_Colak.htm
Editors choice: küçük İskender
Nicola
you decerebrate the rose. don’t do this.
verses, cannot find the poems they deserted
you become a humiliated evening
your hair wet to your waist
your eyes
turned away and fixed on a couple of cracked glasses
left on a claret, velvet coverlet
almost exploded. Soon to blow
before the storm
closely sheilding your face, poor and lonely child
storyless, bashful and amicable
you should have a macedonian name: nicola
I sat on your balcony, drank Choπcko beer,
over the way were
grand men wounded by the earth
grand women are sleeping
grand women wounded on account of grand men
turned into tramps by grand men
a pen knife, holds its blade inside like a secret
the pen knife I put on the table on leaving
a perfect portrayal
if it were nicola what would appear
if it were İskender what would appear
somehow, not far away
was a beautiful graveyard where songs are laid
poet: küçük İskender
translator: caroline stockford
https://estoniacordfrock.wordpress.com/tag/turkish-poetry-in-translation/
picture:küçük İskender
Letters to Virginia Woolf/ umit sener ta
Translated by: Josef Kilciksiz
Letters to Virginia Woolf/ umit sener ta
Translated by: Josef Kilciksiz
In fact, I started yesterday. I was calling the words brought by a hurricane. My soul was as empty as the wind-scoured streets. I do not know if you’ve ever been in such a frame of mind, as if you want to leave but you were unable . Your eyes are always on the door, waiting for someone to enter.
I’ve built thousands of palaces on tiny words
some broke with utterances, some with marble
I don’t have a slingshot to chase the birds, flying over me
Don’t unlock your inwardness Virginia
I sewed knots on myself and
the imagery of your Cossack
It is not easy to hit the sky
when one hooks onto your heart the hook of the ships
when I wander drop by drop in your damp geography
when your heart was open
Looking at the rooms, you were only you, staring back at you
The sourness of the pen is reflected on paper
The lake feels the pain of the submission of the swan whose shadow is broken
the self-lost dervish leaves his cardigan for someone else
I could not deliver you, a life
like the migration of ants, things deleted from my brain
It’s apparent, I could not look after the inner man through the words, while you are growing your inside
Listen Virginia
I'll tell you the chagrin of my inwardness
broken toy of a boy
racing cars, run close to me, uncathable
thickening time
While growing drops deepened seas
I was drowning on the shallow coast of homes
It was like the defeat of a powerless ember
the cloud I carried over me
the shiver of the rain were jackets, peeled out of me
before entering the bed
deceived mother was a scream in the bosom
like wearing a bracelet
I would gift to every new woman
Each diary
like a smile remained incomplete
of a past
despite persistent writing down
my rage is not over time
all the gathered letters are flying to their owner
don’t shout anymore, Virginia
Special thanks to:
Josef Kılçıksız for translating my poem
Vincent Czyz aouthor of the books called "The Christos Mosaic" , "Adrift in a Vanishing City" for editing and his wife Neslihan and congrats.
Cem Duran for editing
Hale KorayMustafa ZiyalanUlas Basar Gezgin for reading and always supporting me.
Editors choice: Yılmaz Güney
Yılmaz Güney (born Yılmaz Pütün, 1 April 1937 – 9 September 1984) was a Kurdish film director, scenarist, novelist, and actor ofZaza, Kurdish origin, who produced movies in Turkish.[1][2][3][4][4] He quickly rose to prominence in Turkish Film Industry. Many of his works were devoted to the plight of ordinary, working class people in Turkey. Yılmaz Güney won the Palme d'Or with the film Yol he co-produced with Şerif Gören at Cannes Film Festival in 1982. At odds with then Turkish Government he fled the country and later lost his citizenship.
Yılmaz Güney was born in 1937 in the Yenice county of Adana. His father was Zaza from Siverek and his mother was Kurd from Varto.[1][4] His parents migrated to Adana to work as cotton field laborers. As a result of his family background, young Yılmaz grew among the working class. This was a strong background for his future works which generally focused on a realistic portrayal of downtrodden and marginalized strata of the population in the country. Güney studied law and economics at the universities of Ankara andIstanbul, but by the age of 21 he found himself actively involved in film-making.As Yeşilçam, the Turkish studio system, a handful of directors, including Atıf Yılmaz, began to use cinema as a means of addressing the problems of the people. State-sanctioned melodramas, war films, and play adaptations had mostly previously been played in Turkish theaters. These new filmmakers began to shoot and screen more realistic pictures of Turkish/Kurdish life. Yılmaz Güney was one of the most popular names to emerge from this trend, a gruff-looking young actor who earned the moniker Çirkin Kral ("the Ugly King" in Turkish) or "paşay naşirîn" in Kurdish (Sorani dialect). After working as an apprentice screenwriter for and assistant to Atıf Yılmaz, Güney soon began appearing in as many as 20 films a year and became Turkey's one of the most popular actors. The early 1960s brought restricted freedom to Turkey, and Güney was imprisoned from 1960 to 1962. In prison he wrote what some labeled a "communist" novel, They Died with Their Heads Bowed.[5] The country's political situation and Güney's relationship with the authorities became even more tense in the ensuing years. Not content with his star status atop the Turkish film industry, Güney began directing his own pictures in 1965. By 1968 he had formed his own production company, Güney Filmcilik. Over the next few years, the titles of his films mirrored the feelings of the people of Turkey: Umut (Hope, 1970); Ağıt (Elegy, 1972); Acı (Pain, 1971); The Hopeless (1971). After 1972, however, Güney would spend most of his life in prison. Arrested for harboring anarchist students, Güney was jailed during preproduction of Zavallılar (The Miserable, 1975), and before completing Endişe (Worry, 1974), which was finished in 1974 by Güney's assistant, Şerif Gören. This was a role that Gören would repeat over the next dozen years, directing several scripts that Güney wrote in prison. Released from prison in 1974 as part of a general amnesty, Güney was re-arrested that same year for shooting Sefa Mutlu, the public prosecutor of Yumurtalık district in Adana Province, to death in a night club as a result of a drunken row[6] and given a prison sentence of 19 years. During this stretch of incarceration, his most successful screenplays were Sürü (The Herd, 1978) and Düşman (The Enemy, 1979), both directed by Zeki Ökten. Düşman won an Honourable Mention at the 30th Berlin International Film Festival in 1980.[7] After escaping from prison in 1981 and fleeing to France, Güney won the Palme d'Or at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for his film Yol, whose director in the field was once again Şerif Gören. It was not until 1983 that Güney resumed directing, telling a brutal tale of imprisoned children in his final film, Duvar (The Wall, 1983), made in France with the cooperation of the French government. Meanwhile, Turkey's government revoked his citizenship and a court sentenced him to twenty-two extra years in jail.[5] Yılmaz Güney died of gastric cancer in 1984, in Paris, France.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C4%B1lmaz_G%C3%BCney
Editors choice:Levent Karatas
Of This Of That
We are watching the air
Which the wolves would afraid of; that mud-covered, dark air
Standing still by the window
Comparing with the air of yesterday’s and the day before’s
Oh Lord! Sunlessness gives us so much pain sometimes
Sunlessness of our souls give pain too
“That’s” we say, “devil’s shadow lover weather”
We think of ghosts getting wet under the rain
Passing through a parallel season while roaming country by country
We think of him as opening an umbrella, closing it
We speak about the weather
About the weepy weepy weepy weather
We believe into the flying planes
And into the non arival trains
We see the sea and starting to talk about the water
Of this of that
‘Oh’ we say, ‘I see the sea’. I wish I would lay here forever
We feel the rain goes down on the sea
That we are cold
That we tremble
As if the wind touches
We wake up with the water
We speak with the air
Like everyone else did
We speak of this of that.
Poet: Levent Karatas
Translator: Hande Dipligunes
Hypnosis
Who brought me here?
Last, I was in my toilet, I guess
I remember that
And who are those men taking all that files?
That cook
Or that cook
Or that cook
Are you the doctor?
Or is it my mother who wants me to wake up?
But it can be my father too
Are you the doctor?
Last I ordered a double raki
I’ll never be able to see that raki on my table, I guess
Are you the waiter?
I am sitting on a red armchair
I have even gone to the most dead-end streets
But this is bad
Ha ha ha!
I thought nightmen remained in my childhood
Is that the nightman’s whistle?
It can be a conductor too
But it’s bad this time
What did I promise myself
Ah, are you the doctor?
Ha ha ha!
Poet: Levent Karatas
Translator: Hande Dipligunes
Editors choice:Rezonans
"Rezonans received the 2nd prize with 90.56% points at the Cork International Fleischmann Trophy, which is one of the most prestigious choral festivals in Europe. (april 27-may2 , 2016)"
Rezonans was founded in 2010 by a young team with an innovative and dynamic understanding of music. Having accomplished numerous international projects to date, Rezonans shares its repertoire that focuses on a capella music with music lovers all around Turkey.
Finding the opportunity to work with world famous conductors including Simon Carrington, Volker Hempfling, Klaus-Jürgen Etzold, and Paulo Lourenço, Rezonans also performed with conductors such as Nigel Short, one of the founding members of the King’s Singers; Brady Allred, who gives master classes on choral conducting in various countries; and Jo-Michael Scheibe, the president of the American Choral Directors’ Association, as a part of its latest project focusing on the music of Grammy© winning choral conductor and composer Eric Whitacre. On November 8, 2015, the choir presented an unforgettable music show under the baton of Eric Whitacre in Zorlu Performing Arts Center.
Alongside international projects, Rezonans also focuses on the works of 20th and 21st century Turkish composers. Having performed both the Turkish and world premieres of the works by Hasan Uçarsu, Özkan Manav, and Kâmran İnce, the choir aims at continuing to unearth new Turkish choral pieces in the future.
Rezonans has represented Turkey at Europa Cantat XIX organized by the European Choral Association in Pécs, Hungary, in July 2015. The choir is getting ready to take part in international festivals and competitions throughout Europe.
Editors note:
Treasury
She was born as a daughter of a family of Çarmışıh, Land of Poets, Hilal Nesin grew up with folk songs in a poetical atmosphere. She studied in İsmail Baha Sürarslan Conservatory of Antalya Metropolitan Municipality, and graduated from Department of Turkish Folk Music
She did 4 years Folk song program for Aydın TV station. She received theater education in Müjdat Gezen Art Center and continued her works uninterruptedly in other areas of arts.
Transferring women's issues to the stage, she was intended to take woman into social life. For this purpose, she founded the theater ensemble, ”Çeşnibahar Kadınlar Tiyatro Topluluğu” and she was art director of this ensemble for years. She’s first run is a Çeşnibahar musical "Çeşnibahar Müzikali”
She’s theater play "Koca Yasa", which was written and directed by her, describing woman’s problem, has been exhibited at home and abroad.
Other many theater plays like "Gıvır" ve Pembe Gözlük Mor Ayna" were also written and directed by her, in their content to observe an approach of not remaining silent on social issues.
She is also director of the oratorio named " Şeyh Bedrettin'den Bu Yana Can Yana", written by Cemal Canpolat, which aims to make heard the screams of peace of mothers.
She is also participating in social, cultural and art projects under umbrella of Antalya Muratpaşa municipality.
Hilal Nesin has also published many books like "Koca Yasa" "Şeyimin Derdi" "Gevşek Vidalar" "Kızınca Kıyamet" "Bir atımlık Sen" "Diren Muhtar"
She is continuing her own writing adventure with the books "Ademin Bademleri" "Hep Sonradan”, to be published in 2016
Marrying Ahmet Nesin, Hilal Nesin becomes daughter-in-law of Aziz Nesin
Editors choice:CİHAN KAR
He was born in Antakya, in 1977. He finished high school in Antakya. In 1999, he received BA degree from University of Marmara Physics Education Teaching. In 2000, He fulfilled his military duty. Between 2000 and 2003 he taught physics as a teacher. Since 2003, he has been working in a private company as an engagement director. He is married and has two children.
Between the years 1995-1999, he successfully received a photography certificate from Marmara University Health, Social and Culture Department (New name: MÜSEM – Marmara University Continuous Education Center). He continued his photography education through private courses which are black-white photography classes taken from fashion and commercial photographer Şenel ALDI and Prof. Dr. Özer KANBUROGLU. He attended dark room workshops. His successful shots, which have mostly micro approach, testify the development of his hometown Antakya, published in local and national papers and magazines. He has so many successful works in photography.
He is also interested in high-speed and infrared photography. In his portfolio his pictures describe mostly facial expressions, holding human and human emotions in the foreground.
In 2001 he took place among the constituents of Antakya Photography Community (AFOT). He held personal also institutional exhibitions participating in AFOT exhibitions. In 2012 he founded Hatay Photographers and Filming Amateurs Institution (HAFSIAD) and became the executive board chairman. In 2014 he started to teach photography and to work on commercial photography in his private studio Fotofilm Hatay (www.fotofilmhatay.com). Cihan KAR is currently teacher in MEB (Ministry of National Education) Defne Halk Eğitim Merkezi (Public Training Center) and in some other educational institutions.
Editors Choice:Robin VAROL
(April 12, 1975) Bingöl. He completed primary and secondary education in Istanbul. He received art training in Moscow between 1996-2000. He was involved in Folk Dances, Music, Theater, and Painting. He taught Folk Dances after he received his teaching certificate from Turkish Folklore Institution. He was engaged in other forms of art in this period when he interrupted his focus on painting.
He opened his first solo painting exhibition at the age of 16 in Söğütlüçeşme High School in 1991. He resumed working on painting in later years. He opened his second solo exhibition in Halkalı Culture Art Center in February 2015 where he presented realistic dry paint portraits. His main style being realistic, Painter Robin Varol now reflects this style in his oil paintings. He defines his works as Emotional Realism.
In my works, I believe that painting has an emotion. I also want this emotion to appear in a realistic form. A painting should bear not only drawing but also emotion. This is how I see emotional realism.
Editors note:PEDAGOGICAL MUSIC
Optimistic Man
as a child he never plucked the wings off flies
he didn't tie tin cans to cats' tails
or lock beetles in matchboxes
or stomp anthills
he grew up
and all those things were done to him
I was at his bedside when he died
he said read me a poem
about the sun and the sea
about nuclear reactors and satellites
about the greatness of humanity
Nazim Hikmet
When you want to live your life, you should hit every note. Fazıl say is one the great musicians from Turkey who hit every note of his life. He done so many things. I want to start with Nazim Hikmet’s poetry . " Fazıl Say Taking his inspiration from the poetry (and the biographies) of the writers Nâzım Hikmet and Metin Altıok, he composed works for soloists, chorus and orchestra which, especially in the case of the oratorio Nâzim, clearly take up the tradition of composers such as Carl Orff."*
When I was looking his face book page I read that he made a new album for children. In that album there are other great musicians such as, Ahmed Adnan Saygun, İlhan Baran, Muhiddin Dürrüoğlu. I was very excited to see his album because I believe in to make investments to our children. Because they our future.
Adding beauty and stories to children's fairytale world filled with music, his album becomes a phenomenon for children. Influences of our poets could vaccines to the children poetic sensitivity and literary consciousness. It is thinkable, that his inspiration resources giving him a political profile, but in fact it is about maintaining a legacy to developing an influential approach toward music education for children.
Say is about to formulate a concept that could be called ‘pedagogical music’, which was based on the unity of the arts symbolized by the reputed musicians, and involved tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture…
*http://fazilsay.com
Editors choice:Ahmet Buke
Ahmet Büke was born in Gördes, Manisa in 1970. He graduated in 1997 from Izmir Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Economics. Because it is a different educational domain compared to his beloved activity, he would say, “Only when I wrote, I get a feeling that I’m useful.” His short story “Kayıp Dua Kitabı” was awarded first place in the 2002 Xasiork Short Story Competition, held by “Ölümsüz Öyküler” publishing house, which has published mostly imaginary items. His short stories have been published in Literary journals such as E Edebiyat, Adam Öykü, Ünlem, Patika, İmge Öyküler, Eşik Cini, Notos and Özgür, and his numerous other articles have been published in magazines such as Yeni Aktüel, Virgül, Yelkovan and in the national newspaper Radikal. He has written for internet journals such as Derkenar, Sosyal Ayrıntılar Ansiklopedisi, Önce Ekmek, Gazetem.net, and continues to write in the zine Velâkin and in the blog Sessizkule. In September, 2004, his first book of short stories “İzmir Postasının Adamları” was published by Kanat Books. His two other books “Çiğdem Külahı” (A Cone of Sunflower Seeds) and “Alnı Mavide” (Brows in the Blue) were published by the same publisher in 2006 and 2008 respectively. The author was awarded the Oğuz Atay Short Story Prize in 2008 for his book “Alnı Mavide”, 2011 Sait Faik novel prize for his book, “Kumrunun Gördüğü”. He is continuously writing as well as online. He is a writer of a web site called on8 and his page called “Sosyal Ayrıntılar Ansiklopedisi”, his selection of stories called Stories of Bedo of Izmir, turned into a novel called “Mevzumuz Derin”(2013, on8) and it has been given the prime novel of the year by association of youth and children . He also was rewarded by Dunya Kitap, the copy right book of the year for “İnsan Kendine De İyi Gelir”. (2015) Same year he published a book called “100 Tuhaf Kitap”, owing to his content, he was able to compile and promote old books with his own unique, unconventional style. His last book “Gizli Sevenler Cemiyeti (2016,on8) also is a selection from “Sosyal Ayrıntılar Ansiklopedisi” Buke is still writing on his blog and lives with his family in Izmir.
TIME DECAY
Day by Day - © Nurdan Hatipoğlu
Translated from the Turkish by Kerim Biçer and İdil Aydoğan.
Bump… I opened my eyes. My ears filled with the sound of a murmuring engine. Followed by shadows, and then light. Then again short and subtle shadows. I felt the breeze. Inhaled the smell of filthy leather. I wanted to reach out to the darkness covering my eyes. I couldn’t lift my arms. I felt them under my body. Pain ran down my shoulders. I couldn’t force them any further. I held my breath. And then let go. I tried to twitch my fingers. My right arm felt more comfortable. I touched my right wrist. Cold iron. Someone grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me up. The light was brighter now.
“You thirsty?”
I nodded.
“We’re almost there. You’re gonna have to wait.”
It felt as if my arms had been chopped off. Thousands of needles piercing my flesh. I wanted to rub my face against my arm.
“No. We can’t take your blindfold off.”
They must have opened the window. The cool pine air flowed in. I could hear cicadas droning. So it was almost evening?
“Where are we going?”
I could hear noises coming from up front.
“How much longer?”
I think it was the driver who answered.
“About a quarter of an hour.”
“We’re making good time.”
“Where are you taking me?”
The one sitting next to me placed his hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t worry. Ain’t no place you don’t know. We’re going back to your childhood.”
I felt a slight sting in the back of my neck. I shuddered. Hundreds of tulle curtains descended upon me. My face slowly cooled off. A winged horse came and wrapped me up in its mane. The noise and the breeze gently swept over us. I sank into moist mud. *** Mina, I’m your brother, you know that, right?
You were a real brat. You’d always have dirt and mud stuck in your long blond hair. Boys would claw your face. But you’d never back down. You’d risk getting beaten up just to hang on to that little corner where you and your friends had drawn a hopscotch court with pieces of broken bricks, to keep from surrendering it to them and their football matches.
You’d cut your dolls’ tummies open with the silver scissors you’d snitch from our grandmother’s wedding chest. You’d stuff chickpeas inside them after pulling out all the cotton, and then you’d struggle to sew them back up.
“They’re going to have babies. Chickpea children with no arms or legs,” you’d say. Do you remember, our grandmother, that Caucasian woman, was terrified of you.
“Watch out for this girl,” she’d moan. “She’s going to bring this family nothing but trouble.”
You never went out to sickle tobacco. You never liked the soil. No matter how badly mother beat you. She dragged you by the hair out by the little pond in our backyard.
“No way I’m sending you to school! Forget the tobacco leaves, it’s your skin I’m gonna hang out to dry!”
Father would shout out from the only window in our jerry-built house.
“Oi, that’s enough!” Mina, I’m your big brother.
We went to İzmir together. To study. They put us in that aileevi1 in Karataş. Quite a spacious room. Two small spring mattress beds. A table. Stools.
You remember?
You remember that young fireman in the room next door who was studying for his exams? I used to go to his place and drink wine.
“Brother, you should concentrate on your studies. He’s nothing but a pig. Don’t go taking after that bastard,” you’d say.
Mina, that scoundrel gave me money. Found me a job. I quenched my thirst for women, thanks to him. What? My job?
Is there such a thing as an easy job in this world? And what if I had finished high school? What if I’d had to go back, back to the tobacco fields? Breaking leaves all night until dawn. Flies attracted by the light of the fluorescent lamp all going in your mouth. Stringing tobacco leaves under the arbour all night until you can barely sit upright. Fried courgettes for dinner, and warm water to drink.
Do you remember what grandmother used to say? “Go rinse your mouth. Courgettes is a dish fit for prophets.”
Mina, why on earth did you get involved in all this?
It’s all my fault. I neglected you. On that day when we went to bury mother, father entrusted you to me.
“Listen son! Your mother and your sister are both bad seed. Your mother drank tobacco pesticide. She died foaming at the mouth. Watch out for Mina. Trouble breeds trouble.”
What did I do? I went and took you to the dormitory myself. Just to get you away from that one bedroom home. So you’d stay away from me. I now carried cold iron in my belt. In my heart, a twelve bullet courage had settled. What? My job?
There’s no such thing as an easy job in this world, is there?
That night towards dawn, my hands were trembling as I took whiffs from the fat roll. Is there a job in this world which is not stained with blood? With me living in the guise of a man, walking up and down, let’s say, Konak Square, or rambling around Kemeraltı dirt-poor, and those tarts reluctantly spreading their legs as they lie in beds reeking of piss, dare anyone speak of conscience?
Who took notice of me?
Not even you took me for a man. That afternoon, following the radio announcement, we cut off the road. I ran up the street where the crowd had parted. You were leaning against a utility pole in the corner, trembling. Pulling at your hair I dragged you into a row of houses. I could have taken you away with me then. But you just stood there looking at me. And then you pushed me away. You walked all over me like I was a wad of tawny phlegm on the ground.
Mina, why?
Look, they brought you all the way up here. To the final destination of those who don’t speak. Here, the tick-tock stops. We end it. We take away the vigour of life and in its stead, we leave the coldness of disappearance. No, we won’t torment you any further. We possess the mortals on whom pain can no longer be inflicted.
We only ask the final question.
“Would you like us to erase all the faces you’ve ever seen, all the breezes you’ve ever felt, and all your moments of joy and sorrow?”
Mina, if you don’t speak now, you’ll be the end of me. They’ll have me pull the trigger.
But Mina, is there truly any job that’s good?
Is this world not made of decaying meat and shattered bones? *** They’re burying me where I thought they would. I know so. Above us will be cypress leaves. Towards evening, herds of goats will pass by the lower wall of the cemetery. A boy shall whistle them along, taking hesitant steps. The worst thing is they’ll lay me beside my mother.
And they’ll say, “She killed her mother slowly with grief.”
My brother takes the shovel now.
The worst thing is, my breasts will decay and fall to my mother’s side.
My brother shall live on like a blood drenched country. . 1. Aileevi: Also known as ‘kortejo’ (courtyard), are homes built by Sephardi Jews who settled in İzmir some 500 years ago. Jewish families lived a communal life in these buildings, where they shared common kitchens, bathrooms and living areas. Their only private space was their bedrooms. In time, as the Sephardi Jews began to move out, the buildings were occupied by other minorities. These were poor families of various different ethnic backgrounds who had newly immigrated to the city. Originally published in Turkish as: Zaman Çürüğü
As part of the collection: Alnı Mavide.
by Ahmet Büke.
Published by Kanat.
Editors choice:Firuz Kutal
Born in Turkey, moved to Norway in 1985, got in Oslo State Art School MA degree as Graphic designer and illustrator. Freelancer since 1992. He made comics, book covers, 2d and 3d animations, political cartoons, banners, etc. He has some honarary mentions around the world and got first prize in Venice, Italia 2011 with his one minute animation about Peace and In December 2009 he won one of United Nation's RANAN LURIE POLITICAL CARTOON AWARD for ''Citation for Excellence.'' He is a regular cartoonist for a weekly news/periodical Ny Tid in Norway and produces daily cartoons for ortakhaber.com LAcibert Litature Magazine, etc in Turkey. Member of FECO-Norway and he is one of international Cartoonist for Peace group where Le Monde cartoonist Plantu is leader. Current residence in Norway.
Editors choice:Volkan Hacioglu
Volkan Hacioglu was born in Istanbul, Turkey on 26 September 1977. He earned B.A. in 2000, and then M.A. in 2003 both at Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics. In 2006 he matriculated in the Ph.D. program in economics at State University of New York at Albany, College of Arts and Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in 2010. He lectured courses of Æsthetics at Nazim Hikmet Academy. Since 1997 his poems and poetry translations appeared in various journals and magazines. Hes has three books of poetry published. He is the-editor-in-chief of the international multilingual magazine Rosetta World Literatura.
Shelley's Heart
Cor cordium
A great lighthouse still
On the horizon blazes
And dark storm will
Ruin the rough seas
My vision is of but thee
In the mirror drown’d thy soul
Of thee in lieu let I die
And be a ghost or a ghoul
Not the Gods can divide us
Thy dubber doppelgänger
Show of a pair of shadows
The Soul twin hereafter
Talk to me please
Shelley’s heart over
Set into fire at unease
Like a salamander
Tell me the truth Alastor
Of ‘The Spirit of Solitude’
All in all but love for
Kindle into a new prelude
The Hermit of Marlow
Then be dumb forever
Modern Prometheus
Frankenstein’s lover
“Nondum amabam
Et amare amabam
Quaerebam quid amarem
Amans amare”
The magical chiper of poetry
In thy heart breaking
“Night” is eyes’ alchemy
And the darkness everlasting
O what a grand core
To catch fire from sky
Let stars ignite more
Lest thy torch die!
Editors choice: Yusuf Eradam
Between 1988-89 with a British Council scholarship, he studied in Moray House College of Education, in Edinburgh, Scotland received his second MA in TESOL (teacher training in the Teaching of English to the Students of Other Languages) with his dissertation Literature in Language Teaching.
He worked as an instructor of English at Hacettepe University (1977-85), at UNLV (University of Nevada Las Vegas,1994) and SVSU (Saginaw Valley State University of Michigan, 1999) to teach comparative literature and film and at the Department of American Culture & Literature of Ankara University, where he taught American literature for 20 years (1985-2004) and retired as the Chair.
He is also known for his translations of two Paul Auster novels, Herman Melville’s masterpiece Bartleby, the Scrivener, Sylvia Plath’s Ariel poems and Gabards’ Psychiatry and the Cinema. He has edited and contributed to many international and Turkish anthologies.
He has held five photography exhibitions, first in Michigan, USA. At present he lives and writes in Cihangir, Istanbul and he is teaching literature, cinema, narratology as the Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature of Istanbul Kültür University.
Eradam, has received a scholarship from the Writers Union of Sweden in 2008 and represented Turkey in the first Waltic Congress with 600 other writers and translators from around the world. He made a speech titled “Labour, Vanity and Envy: Writer Translating, Translator Writing”.
In 2011, he won the best translation award presented by the Ankara Art Foundation for his translation of The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, which is still on stage in Ankara. In 2012 he won an award for a story of his about human rights and architecture.
Eradam, with many awards in other creative activities of his, is the author of 13 books of his own, and 7 translations; and is working on a new book of stories, his autobiographical novel, a multi-authored book he will edit on real life stories of fraternity and goodness, a collection of essays on culture of obedience and his third book of poetry.
SIBILANT LOVE
Storks are migrating back
summer is at hand.
The deluge of longing for you
remains 'cause you stamped it
with your red-hot lips.
Written & translated & photo by Yusuf Eradam
Editors choice:Filiz Asrak Ankaç
Born 1963-İstanbul. She graduated from Mimar Sinan University Fine Arts Faculty, Painting Department Neşet Günal/Neşe Erdok Atelier (1987). She took her masters degree from the Plastic Arts Department of the Fine Arts and Design Faculty of Near East University (2012).
Individual Exhibitions
1989–Nicosia,FluxusArtGallery.
1994–Nicosia,HPGallery.
2012 – Famagusta, Eastern Mediterranean University, Art and Design Centre Exhibition Hall.
2014- Girne, Artrooms Galery
for mor info:http://www.filizankac.com/tr
About Editor: Umit Sener Ta
Sener Ta,was born in Netherlands.Grew up in Turkey and lives in USA,CA.He has one book, "Bocekciler Carsisi". He has so many translations and poems published in several magazines in Turkey.
Editors choice:Kadir Okurer
05.05.1990 Born in Ankara. Started his ballet education in Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory in department of ballet in 2002. When he was continuing his education, he entered Ankara State Opera and Ballet as a soloist dancer. In 2010, when he was undergraduate student, he directly passed from 2nd class to 4thclass, due to his extraordinary success. He has worked with Irek Mukhamedov for a year in 2013.He is still working in Ankara State Opera and Ballet as a soloist dancer. In 2008, he took place in Opéra National de Bordeux as a soloist dancer for a season. He participated in many international ballet and dance competitions since 2006. In 2006, he won the 3rd prize in “International Varna Ballet Competition.” In 2008, he won the Grand Prix in “Istanbul International Ballet Competition.” In 2009, he won the 2nd prize in “Youth America Grand Prix” and he won the 2nd prize in “Premio Rome Ballet Competition”. In 2010, he won the Andante Magazine classical music awards " Male dancer of the year ". In 2010, he won 3rd prize in “Seoul International Dance Competition”. In 2014, he won 2nd prize in “Grand Prix of Siberia”. In addition he performed in various gala programs and dance festivals: Macedonia Gala (2008), Istanbul Golden Bridge Igor Zelensky & Farukh Ruzimatov Gala Program (2010), Hagen Ballet Gala (2011) ,Bodrum International Ballet Stars Festival (2008) Kyrgyz Bishkek Gala Program (2015) , Istanbul International Ballet Competition Gala (2010 - 2012).
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Editors choice:Murat Altunoz
Murat Altunoz was born in Antakya in 1977. He has worked as a journalist in Istanbul,Ankara, Antakya and Middle East for many years. He has worked at local, national, international press agencies, newspapers and internet journalism department as editor, reporter, photojournalist for 20 years and has put signature to many news. He was in civil and military prisons for 6 years at certain periods because of his articles, news and politic thoughts. He has been tortured and has been treated for many years because of this torture. He had published the literature journals named Karalama, Amanos Yazilari and Dar Sokak with his friends in Turkey and his poems has been published in many literature journals regularly. Also he has a poem book named "Kirilgan Zamanlar" and this book has been translated to Arabic. Altunoz who has gained awards at his sector and is still working with some newspapers and news agencies has settled into Sweden 2 years ago by leaving his own country because of the cases about his news, articles and ethnic identity, death threats and being under pressure. Journalist Murat Altunoz has two books named "Uzak" and "Kayip Mektuplar" which are ready to be published.
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Editors Choice:C. Hakkı Zariç
C. Hakkı Zariç was born in the Susuz district of Kars, Turkey, on the 5th of January 1972. He spent ten years in prison for his political views. He published the literary magazine ‘Ağır Ol Bay Düzyazı’ together with his friends. His essays and poems have been published in various literary magazines such as ‘Evrensel Kültür’, ‘İzlek’, ‘Öteki-siz’, ‘Rüzgâr’, ‘Bireylikler’, ‘Eliz Edebiyat’, ‘Erkekçe’. Currently he is the editor of ‘Evrensel Kültür’ and ‘Evrensel Basım Yayın’.
Books:
‘Ağzımızın Yanmışlığıyla’ [Once Bitten...] ‘Gerçek Sanat Yayınları’, May 1999. ‘Keşke Hiç...’, [Only If…] ‘Hera Şiir Kitaplığı’ May 2001. ‘Şairlere Mektuplar',[Letters to the Poets] ‘Bizbize Yayınları’, October 2006. ‘Senli’ [With You], ‘Bizbize Yayınları’, October 2006. ‘Sıfır’ [Zero], ‘Yasakmeyve Yayınları’, December 2014. ‘Utanç ve Onur, 1915-2015 Ermeni Soykırımı'nın 100. Yılı’ [Disgrace and Pride, 1915-2015, The 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide] (co-author with Aydın Çubukçu, Nevzat Onaran and Onur Öztürk ), ‘Evrensel Basım Yayın’, April 2015 Toz Kadınları, Notabene Yayınları, October 2015
Awards:
- ‘Mısralık’ 2000 Youth Poetry Prize for his poem ‘Keşke Hiç... [Only If...]’
- 2008 ‘Behzat Ay’ Literature Prize for his short stories ‘Sedef Hanım’ [Miss Sedef], ‘Yaprak Hanım’ [Miss Yaprak] and ‘Nehir Hanım’ [Miss Nehir]
He, a member of the Writers Union of Turkey, served in the executive board during the 17th and the 18th terms.
He is a member of PEN (International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists)
Lastly, there were chrysanthemums on your face
And questions which reflected its meaning: your eyes
IF ONLY...
I was dry cold, less than whole... Without food
Within me, poems rushed for their turn
If only you hadn’t untimely knocked on my door
If only you hadn’t nailed down my days with your dark smile
If only you had never come
Night was mixing into the pitch
To go was an abyss, to return, the cry of not seeking
To give you up, regret
It was the dice throwing with the blind god of those who can’t see tomorrow
If only you had never come
Pale-faced poem sketches in fair winds
There were lovers unable to bleed during infertile times
I was passing through the autumn side of illusions
Deceitful were the dark touches, scenting murder
If only you had never come
Raindrops like splinters
That stabbed rug-patterned wounds on my skin
The rose which thrust its thorn into its pink scent
The ash which fell to my share of strange words
The sky which burst into laughter with its copper thunderbolts
They were the only things we shared
If only you had never come
Just a ragged word was fidelity, on sale
Flawless and shadow less grey was the taste of your absence
To forget was the most innocent shelter of our age
To be forgotten evoked suicide and nothingness
If only you had never come
Still, if only you hadn’t come once again
With my inner bleeding slightly smiling face
If only you hadn’t kept me waiting for the morning like sparrows
I was dry cold, without food… Less than whole...
If only you had never come
If only you hadn’t set your earth-tasting blue eyes on the galley-slave in my eyes
If only you had never...!
Şiir: C. Hakkı Zariç
Türkçe aslından çeviri: Oya/ Gürgenç Korkmazel
Editors choice:Neşe Yaşın
Neşe Yaşın was born in 1959 in Cyprus. She is well known and read on both sides of divided Cyprus. She studied Sociology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara.
She directed and presented a literary program called “41st Room” at CYBC radio (1992-2007) and the program Peace Garden (2001-2003) at radio ASTRA.
She is currently teaching language and literature at the Turkish Studies department of University of Cyprus, writing weekly columns for Yenidüzen newspaper (Cyprus).
She has published six volumes of poetry ‘Hyacinth and Narcissus’ (1979), ‚Tears of Wars’ (1980), Doors’ (1992), ‚The Moon is Made of Love’ (2000), ‘Chambers of Memory’ (2005 ) Selected poems (2008) one novel ‚Secret History of Sad Girls’ (2002) and a research book, Remembering through Poetry (2013). Her poetry has been translated to more than 40 languages, published in literary magazines and anthologies in several countries. She has participated in poetry festivals and readings around the world. Among others she has received the Anthias Pierides Award in 1998.
THE LIGHT RISING INSIDE ME
Who knows perhaps
while you shot from the barricades
that killed our house
I used to mellow into childish sadness
deaths passing through my deep sighs
I knew back then
one day you would steal my soul
While I ran off to the spaces between stairs
crying over family murders
it whispered dreams of the future
the light rising inside me
Three angels appeared
one brought a red poppy
the second a gentle kiss from you
the third was empty handed
embarrassed looked me in the face
And then the ghosts of martyrs
chased me in their blood soaked clothes
my history teacher
read out lies at the gates of Heaven
I waited for such a long long time for you
in desolate Babylon towers
Take off your soldier’s clothes
and come close to me
give me three babies from the souls of the dead
One to make me forget all pain
the other to console the earth
the third to wander the city in the night
and hold crying mothers by the hand
translated by: Mehmet Ali Aydin
PENELOPE
The footprints of the visible
are traced in the gaze of others
from the gates of grief
to the eyes of time
In memory’s secret room
forbidden hours kiss the clouds
the early autumn of tiny pleasures
How tattered now
the words moaning in the well of the soul
However tight your embrace
so much it pinches the flesh
however far you burn
so much is the ash
however warm the room of love
so much the cold outside
There is no Ithaca
don’t come back
The woman in waiting
vanished long ago
in the silence of other women
Translated by:Clifford Endres
Coeditor :Josef Kılçıksız
Kılçıksız Josef was born in Antioch, as the eldest male child of Greek-Orthodox family. Breathing liberal air of the city's cosmopolitan atmosphere Kılçıksız, found himself in high school and college years in the domain of the left tradition. Due religious, political and social pressures, thereof he and his family suffered, failed to complete his higher education in Turkey, except Philosophy at Hacettepe His higher education adventure has continued abroad of Turkey: Theology at Pontificia university of Rome Study in Human sciences, philosophy and German philology, at the Tampere (Finland) University. Currently he has been working as a doctoral student and deputy assistant at the same university. His doctoral study is based on a comprehensive social analysis of W. Koeppen’s trilogy. The focus of this work is mythical phenomena, broken out in post-war German society. After having completed a period of study in Paris, he leaved France for Finland, where he is living and working for years. Numerous articles with a cultural and social contents, which criticize political and social developments in Turkey, have been published in various Finnish newspapers. A study of poetry was published also in Finland under the name ’Hedelmät, jotka eivät tuoksu ruudille” (acrid smell of gunpowder in fruits of the languages) There is also a poetry book published in Turkey under the name ‘Bahar Kapımda’ (spring at my door) His language skills is wide, extending from Turkish and Arabic to İtalian, French, German, Finnish and English
Embers and ashes
I’ll bring you the words of silence, replete with lead;
hot in the mouth of a Beretta…
I want to begin a noisy suicide in this deafening silence.
Pulling the trigger,
maybe you make me owner a single word,
if some crumbs of sake remain…
September's languages are disentangling,
talking inside of me,
in no time compile dispersed melodies of fall ,
maybe one day you gathered me spring’s songs from them…
Look,
stretching his arc,
hand in the string,
the seasons are waiting,
give me a sign,
I broke thrown arrow of the time,
which targeted our dreams…
With her lemon-yellow hair always,
there are infinite silence of September,
latent in you,
leaves her colors in to silver oyster;
to hide them in the blue bottom,
remains again
task of the sea of sadness…
The night is a owl deprived of his hunt,
snatched up of you the turtledove,
taken refuge under your wings…
and again
remains duty of wings of darkness,
to move away the secret…
Havens split us into two,
as extinguished and slipped stars,
we're suddenly shadowless in the vast atlas of the night…
A awesome fire broke out,
across all ports of darkness skies;
one of us remains in the side of ashes,
other in the side of embers of separation’s fire…
the wind couldn’t hurl ashes away,
which we couldn’t send them off
of our hearts…
Josef Kılçıksız
Helsinki, 24.3.2016
JOSEF KILCIKSIZ |
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Editors Choice: Mustafa Ziyalan
Mustafa Ziyalan was born at the Black Sea coast of Turkey. He worked as a general practitioner and coroner in a rural Anatolian village. Now he lives and practices psychiatry in New York. He had psychoanalytical psychotherapy training. He did research on schizophrenia. He has worked with torture victims, prison inmates, children abusing volatile substances, pathological gamblers, and persons with HIV illness and cognitive disabilities.
His poetry, short fiction, essays and poetry translations have appeared in many literary journals, anthologies (including “New European Poets”) and in book form. Istanbul Noir, an anthology of short fiction he co-edited with Amy Spangler, came out from Akashic Books in 2008. His most recent work of poetry is Rüyacılar Kitabı (Book of Dreamers) that came out in 2012. His most recent book of prose is “Çuvallama Ustası” (Master of Failing), a collection of short fiction, that came out in 2014.
His poetry was part of Letters to Distant Cities (New Amsterdam Records, 2011), a multi-media project featuring photography of Murat Eyüboğlu, spoken word and music by Shara Worden and Claire Manchon. “Alengirli Filmler” (Handsome Films), a collection of film writings, came out in 2012, “Manhattan'da Şiir Konuşmaları” (Poetry Talks in Manhattan), a collection of writings on poets and poetry, in 2009 and “Yakılacak Kentlerden” (From Cities Slated to Burn), a collection of travel writing with original photography by Murat Eyüboğlu, in 2007.
Editors Choice: Mustafa Ziyalan
Mustafa Ziyalan was born at the Black Sea coast of Turkey. He worked as a general practitioner and coroner in a rural Anatolian village. Now he lives and practices psychiatry in New York. He had psychoanalytical psychotherapy training. He did research on schizophrenia. He has worked with torture victims, prison inmates, children abusing volatile substances, pathological gamblers, and persons with HIV illness and cognitive disabilities.
His poetry, short fiction, essays and poetry translations have appeared in many literary journals, anthologies (including “New European Poets”) and in book form. Istanbul Noir, an anthology of short fiction he co-edited with Amy Spangler, came out from Akashic Books in 2008. His most recent work of poetry is Rüyacılar Kitabı (Book of Dreamers) that came out in 2012. His most recent book of prose is “Çuvallama Ustası” (Master of Failing), a collection of short fiction, that came out in 2014.
His poetry was part of Letters to Distant Cities (New Amsterdam Records, 2011), a multi-media project featuring photography of Murat Eyüboğlu, spoken word and music by Shara Worden and Claire Manchon. “Alengirli Filmler” (Handsome Films), a collection of film writings, came out in 2012, “Manhattan'da Şiir Konuşmaları” (Poetry Talks in Manhattan), a collection of writings on poets and poetry, in 2009 and “Yakılacak Kentlerden” (From Cities Slated to Burn), a collection of travel writing with original photography by Murat Eyüboğlu, in 2007.
poetry:Murat Ustubal
Editor's choice:Murat Ustubal
Book:Teknokriptler
Page numbers:47-48
publisher:Ve publishing
Editors choice: "Şiirden" magazine
Şiirden Publishing is founded in 2005. Its publishing policy mainly prioritizes works which focuses on theoretic issues concerning poetry. It has various trademarks such as, "Şiirden", "Şiirden Öykü" (Şiirden Short Story), "Digraf Şiir" (Digraf Poetry), Digraf Öykü" (Digraf Short Story), "Şiirden Cep" (Şiirden Pocket) and "series of thoughts".
Şiirden Publishing has published more than 180 books in four years and it also publishes bimonthly magazine titled “Şiirden Dergi”. Şiirden Publishing also giving a poetry award “Şiirden Şiir Ödülü” which aims to encourage young poets.
Web address: http://www.siirden.net/
Email address: siirdendergi@gmail.com
