Issue XXX February 2020
Poetry from Turkey
edited by Erkut Tokman
 İlhan Sami Çomak
Enchanting Poet
 Metin Celal
Editor's Choice
 Süreyya Aylin Antmen
Editor's Choice
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This collection presents a wide section of contemporary Turkish Poetry with thirty one poets from different backgrounds and inspirations. As you already may know Turkey has more than 80 million people and a vast number of poets too. So I am wisely aware of discluding many of them here due to limited space of the publications.
This edition includes poems from different generations of living Turkish poets. While preparing this issue, I tried to cover today’s Turkish Poetry from a wider perspective and therefore within a short time period I tried to reach poets with different writing influences and backgrounds. You will read at least a dozen of poets here, who are internationally unheard, some of them being published for the first time abroad or hardly ever such as Beytullah Kılıç, Çağla Cinili, İsmail Cem Doğru,Dolunay Aker, Enver Topaloğlu, Nilgün Emre,Adil İzci, Hülya Deniz Ünal, Asuman Susam, Tamer Gülbek, and Erkan Karakiraz. This edition has been framed in a way so that such voices can be heard on the international poetry scene. Some of these poets are established poets with strong poetic voices while others are young and promising. Apart from those included here, poets from rather older generations Metin Celal, Adil İzci, Gülseli İnal, Eray Canberk, Turgay Kantürk, Salih Bolat, and Tozan Alkan have considerable impact on Turkish poetry scene. Also, this edition includes some very young generation poets who are bringing new poetic trends and open-minded views into Turkish poetry. Emre Şahinler’s “Bablylon” (The Poetry City); Dolunay Aker’s “Waiting For Barbarians”; Nilgün Emre’s “Orlando” and Umut Yalım’s influences and creativeness on experimental Turkish poetry has recently brought us color-harmony. Heading to the middle generation poets in this issue who are actively involved in Turkish poetry today - Erkan Karakiraz, Neslihan Yalman and myself with “Open Poetry” movement are trying to influence Turkish poetry on the performative needs of modern poetry from interdisciplinary point of view. On the other side names such as Gökçenur Ç. and Efe Duyan are trying to bring the international poetry scene to Turkey and visa versa by organizing workshops inboard and abroad. Besides such names, İsmail Cem Doğru and Levent Karataş are playing a momentous role in diminishing the gap between various generations of poets. Other important names included in this edition are Mete Özel, Volkan Hacıoğlu, Beytullah Kılıç, Süreyya Aylin Antmen,Asuman Susam, Hülya Deniz Ünal,Nilay Özer,Mehmet Erte,Tamer Gülbek and Nihat Özdal. Lastly I would like to mention İlhan Sami Çomak’s name, who has written 8 poetry books in prison in 26 years and he recently won one of the most prestigious poetry awards in Turkey “Sennur Sezer”. What he has created and been through in prison under severe conditions is extraordinary and deserves praise. He reminds me of Nazım Hikmet - that his poetry is hidden inside of being human and hardship. I hope you will enjoy reading the poets all the way through this issue. Erkut Tokman Guest Editor - Issue XXX |
