Poetry Days 2008
A poem is like a human being. After it is born you cannot control the kind of journey it will make; to which countries it will travel, which hearts it will enter, which fires it will start. The word can travel all around the world. A poem is like a human being because each reader can have a different impression, different feeling for it. It can have friends and enemies, even lovers.
A poem can be on paper, in a book but also in the minds of thousands. So it is indestructible, it has this magic, supernatural power that its enemies cannot cope with.
A poem can be so powerful that in a few lines it can say as much as a whole book. A poem can fly, can swim, can dance, can liberate, can rescue, can make love…
A poem can render you speechless, can make you feel that everything has already been said so beautifully that there is nothing more left to say.
Poems can demolish the limits of thought. They can go beyond all kinds of political or academic analyses. They can open new windows for creative thinking. They can present new concepts to this world.
Poems may be dangerous to those who want their own words to rule the world. A poem can dare to tell the deepest of truths.
Poems are written by poets but poems also engrave poets in the hearts of their readers. Poets usually lead difficult lives because they carry this unstoppable passion of poetry inside them.
Today, as poets coming from different parts of the world, writing in different languages, we celebrate the power of poetry. We present our verses to this wounded, troubled world. You, who are listening to us now: Take them with you and disperse them to the world. Make them your own. Unite with us and let’s multiply…
Metin Kaygalak, born in Bingöl, Turkey, He is a Kurdish poet writing in Turkish. He studies economics and management iat the Uludag University. His first poem was published in Günes Newspaper’s Yount Poets’ Anthology in 1987. Later on his poetry was published in Ayrim Bicim, and other literary reviews. He now writes in Esmer regularly.
From Album – An Atumn end for Lorin
Extract:
So this was it at last
The past which wrinkles me…
My wretched soul…
Because that splendour
Which stood as a question mark
In that hollow and timid emptiness
Was the seldom feeling of your phantom’s excitement
At the end of a painful autumn’s end…
M. Kansu (1938 - ), born in Stavrokonno, a village ear Paphos.
Poet, short story writer . He studied Turkish literature at Gazi Egitim Institute at Ankara and at Hacetepe University, Ankara. And in Glasgow Applied Folk Culture .
Kansu is one of the unique poets, pioneering “Ikinci Yeni Siir – Second New Paoty movement. He has 16 volumes of poetry, 4 short story and 2 Essay books. His poems are also translated into Macedonian and Romanian in two volumes. He has done valuabe contributions to Turksih Cypriot poetry with numberless poems, short stories and essays.
Because the Axis of the World
Is oblique
Extract:
Mostly in the mornings,
the swallows are insane,
because the night is a long
and dark tree.
They sleep and are awake,
Are awake and sleep:
Because the axis of the world
Is oblique,
And because the swallow
Breathes the tiredness of migration
Long before
migrating.
Neriman Cahit
Born in 1937 in Kirni in Kyrenia district. Working as a primary school teacher for many years. very engaged in literature, journalism, trade union engagements, women's movement and research. Her poems were published in various newspapers inCyprus and Turkey and translated into some languages. For her work she got many prizes.
Today she writes colums, essays on art, women and environment and her research work. She is a founder member of the Women Research Centre and since 1991 she has been attending bicommunal Conflict Resolution Studies in Cyprus and overseas. She is a member of World Aademy of Culture, Teachers Trade Union, Women Research Centre, Journalist Association and Greenpeace. For her work she got many prizes.
From:
Always We...
How do they live, women with dreams destroyed
how they passionately fall in love!
...Always they live with breaking hearts
Women children who suck their thumbs
in what flutter is their heart's birds
from those deserted streets where they lost their memories
they come out, always lessened....
Neşe Yaşin (1959)
is a poet and writer read on both sides of divided Cyprus, she has published five volumes of poetry and one novel.
From: The Light rises inside me
...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...
Aliye Ummanel
Born in 1979 in Famagusta. She studies American culture and literature at the Hacettepe University in Ankara. She got her theatre degree on theatre theory, criticism and drama at the Ankara University, Literature and History Faculty. Currently she is working as the director of the Lefkosa Municipal Theatre. She has published one book "Düş Geceye Düşünce".
Untitled:
I turn
the brass handle
of the red door
there' s night behind
owls spoke upon my sight
She's a child
she's a child
she'll speak when she grows up.
Nikki Marangou
Born in Limassol. Studies in West Berlin. She has worked as a dramaturg at the National Theatrical Organisation o Cyprus and since 1980 manages a bookstore in Nicosia. She has published five books of poetry, as well as prose and fairy tales.
From Letter to Dionysis
You see, Dionysis
Nowadays it is not easy for us to speak
Of halycons nor of nightingales
As we have not lives in houses on whose foundations
Cocks were sacrified
Nor have we slept on mattresses
With crosses at their four corners sewn
Where coins fell
Of silver and gold
And seeds of cotton and of sesame…
Stephanos Stephanides
Born in Trikomi in 1949. He went to the UK as a child, where he lived until finishing his education at Cardiff University. Helived many years in Guyana, USA and Spain. In 1991 he returned to his native island as a founding member of faculty of the University of Cyprus where he is Professor of Comparative Literature. As well as poet, he is a literary and cultural critic, ethnographer, translator. He has published two books.
From: Jaya Devi
Goddess, tonight you are dreadful
Last night you enticed me
In your watery blue.
Why tonight do you shake and pump my body
Until filth flows out from all my orifices.
Gür Genç
Born in Paphos in 1969. For may years he lived in Turkey and Britain. He has recited his poems in various countries of Europe and his poems have been translated into different languages. Now he lives in Cyprus as an editor, translator and coordinator.
Kicking butterflies
She is kicking butterflies
Bringing venereal moons on her skin
Getting closer to me, closer, my left knee
Becomes limpid, and I know it is her,
I collapse because I can no longer escape.
Fountains gyre the wrong way
Domes and my head
Getting closer to me, closer, in the heat
She appears fairer, and there she is…
Butterflies gone, she turns on me…
Jenan Selçuk
Born in 1974 in Stavrogonno nr. Paphos. Graduated in 2001 from International Relations Department of EMU. He lived many years abroad, Fethiye, Marmaris, Hamburg and Manchester. He worked in many jobs including bartending, singing and translating. His poems were published in newspapers. With a minimalist understanding he is benefitingfrom the mythological , historical and multi-cultural/multi-identical past of the island, in order to form a hybrid poetry. Together with the other members of the Subconscious Gang, he is publishing the underground literature and art journal Isirgan. He has published two poetry books.
Spring
Pollen pins,
You attach
To your haor
As death’s spider
Knits
Under your arm pits.
Clouds
Suffocated from the heat,
Crowding into theears of wheat.
Lowers languorously
Your sunflower pupils,
Flows
From the edge of your gaze.
Melted copper
Your sweat
Ferments with your scent,
Burns
Love’s lips.
Tamer Önçül
Born in Nicosia in 1960. Graduated from the Dentistry Faculty at Istanbul University in 1984. He started writing poetry in the 1970s, searching for a new style, mixing realism with a sensitivity to “cypriotness”. His six poetry books have been translated into many languages.
From 40 years old
The moldy soil I breathe
Yellow henna…a pair of lungs
Laid in smoke..
Corpses of miner earthworms
Swim in my broncus
Every cough an explosion..
A gas leakage in my throat
-do not approach with fire –
Compressed words
Can be fatal…
Deaths have burned
With bodies older than their souls
In the flame of fourty years….
Zeki Ali
Born in Nicosia in 1951. He lived in Canada with his family between 1973 and 1992. His first collection of poetry was in 1970. Six were to follow. His works appeared in many literary reviews and anthologies and are translated into many languages. He is a peace activist and formed the first bicommunal music group Poetz4peace with Hadji Mike, a poet/musician from South Cyprus. Currently he is the President of the Turkish Cypriot Artists and Writers Association.
From: Dry wells
Days of sacrifice for love
Are beyond the ash mountain now
Rose in an animation
And nightingale is a forgotten tongue
Layla is living with Kerem
And Asli discovered Juliette
When Romea left her
With a handful of debt and grandchildren
The image is reflecting on everything
‘cept the hidden rooms of our bodies
The image is reflecting on image
When substance is no longer void
Ümit Inatçı
Born in Limassol in 1960. Artist writer, critic. He completed his higher education in Pietro Vannucci Fine Arts Academy in Perugia, Italy, with distinction – Maestro di Arte – in 1984.
In his poetry one can find the synthesis of his intellectual and artistic background, art semiotics, studies on perception and philosophy are uniquely integrated in his imagery, metaphor form and the structure of his poems. Major themes of his poetry are the cultural and personal ethics, mostly expressed in dark sarcasm. He has published eight poetry collections.
Death, please forgive me
I don’t want to give up any uselessness
Getting me live my life.
No benefit is as necessary as pain
No wound, but disgrace bleeds painfully.
It is my will to self-correction
That makes me stick to life.
Death, please forgive me,
For all those left incomplete.