Turkish Poetry Today 2016

To those of you who are already familiar with Turkish Poetry Today and to those of you who aren’t, to those of you familiar with Turkish poets writing in the present and recent past and to those of you who are not, we bid a hearty welcome to the fourth issue of our journal, which we hope will continue to open doors for all its readers into Turkey’s ever-evolving literary scene.

As the new editors of TPT, one of the most significant changes we’re making is the inclusion of a Featured Poet section that offers a comprehensive selection of a major Turkish poet’s work. Our first featured poet, Behçet Necatigil (1916-1979), has long been recognized as a modern Turkish classic, and in this issue you’ll encounter the broad range of work produced by this very prolific and versatile writer, comprising not only poems but two essays and an excerpt from his series of highly popular radio plays. We’re grateful to the attendees of the 2015 Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature (tecca.boun.edu.tr), the focus of which was Behçet Necatigil’s writings, for sharing their translations with us.

Following the Featured Poet section you’ll find a selection of poems that represent the various styles and forms of modern Turkish poetry produced in the last 120 years, including some very recently written work. While, happily enough, the last two or three decades have witnessed an unprecedented surge in the world-wide translation of Turkish poetry and fiction, and some poets of the present generation have been lucky enough to have their work translated and published internationally, Turkish authors haven’t always been fortunate enough to be recognized through translations during their lifetime. This means that their work has to wait for ‘just the right moment’ as the years go by. Fortunately, steady progress is being made in bringing to light the work of highly gifted but woefully overlooked poets (such as that of Behçet Necatigil, Melih Cevdet Anday and others appearing in this journal) to the world outside their native country. We’re proud to play a part in this crucial task.

In the third section, devoted to essays and reviews, you’ll encounter the review of a collection of poetry by another modern master, Gülten Akin (1933-2015). In a survey sponsored by by the Milliyet Arts Journal in 2008, Gülten Akin was voted ‘the greatest living Turkish poet’ by an outstanding majority of Turkish writers and critics. Two of her final poems are included in translation in this issue as well. Also, for those who wish to know more about the background of mid-20th century poetics in Turkey we’re including an essay famously known in Turkish literary history as ‘The Garip Manifesto’ translated by Victoria Holbrook. This extremely important document was written in 1941 by Orhan Veli, who, with young fellow-poets Oktay Rifat and Melih Cevdet Anday, started the Garip (Strange) Movement, also known as the First New. A selection of poems by these three poets follows the manifesto, and in the poetry section just before it you’ll find several poems by Melih Cevdet Anday translated by Sidney Wade and Efe Murad.

While ideally we might have parallel English/Turkish texts for all contributions, with the expanded content of the journal we only have space for selected bilingual texts interspersed through the first two sections. This will provide an opportunity for readers who are proficient in both English and Turkish to see how the language used by Turkish poets has changed over the decades, and it will show the strategies employed by translators faced with certain problems they encounter vis-à-vis Turkish grammar and colloquial usages.