{"id":18414,"date":"2026-01-05T13:16:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T13:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=18414"},"modified":"2026-01-05T13:16:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T13:16:21","slug":"contemporary-turkish-poetry-considered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2026\/01\/05\/contemporary-turkish-poetry-considered\/","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary Turkish Poetry Considered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review: Fog Bells: 8 Contemporary Turkish Poets (Dedalus Press, 2025)<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cA writer\u2019s life\u201d, the poet Nick Laird once remarked<\/a><\/span>, with a self-assurance befitting a Royal Society of Literature Fellow, \u201cis a cycle of trying to get to their work, sitting staring at the blank screen, wandering off, steering their reluctant bodies back\u201d to the desk where they compose \u2013 out of the ambient, affluent bustle of London or New York, where they live \u2013 a \u201cpattern\u201d on the page, to make sense of the \u201cchaos of daily circumstance\u201d. Given the apparently placid tenor of Laird\u2019s own routine, such \u201cchaos\u201d would appear to be largely symbolic, or at least to unfold outside the pale of the writer\u2019s bubbled existence, self-absorbed and self-admiring.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, of course, the amiable sequestration of even the most punctilious of poetic solipsists can be disturbed: by disruptive riots or bad reviews, human rights abuses or pesky up-starts who have the audacity to care. It\u2019s then that the holy guardians are called on to defend and re-sanctify the art, imperilled by a round of \u201cdaily circumstance\u201d grown all too intrusive. To quote Ireland\u2019s current Chair of Poetry, speaking in 2017<\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

Must poetry be louder, must it be more active, more politically and socially engaged? I can\u2019t bring myself to believe that the answer to this is yes. Poetry\u2019s response must be to remain true to itself rather than rush into rhetoric. Poems shouldn\u2019t be about getting a point across.<\/em><\/p>\n

Poetry\u2019s right to be pointless, the poet\u2019s freedom to shun the claims of political or social conscience: these are the resounding criteria, the engraven ingredients, of literary greatness.<\/p>\n

\n

A new podcast and article discuss fresh crackdowns targeting the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, with Fatima Akman Lehmann joining Luke Sheehan.https:\/\/t.co\/nQzOJ3bxCP<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) January 3, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We might wonder how such prescriptions would be received in Turkey, a country which, under the influence of Recep Erdo\u011fan, has undergone<\/a><\/span> a process of forceful \u201cauthoritarian consolidation\u201d in recent years: the diversity of a multi-ethnic polity replaced by a top-down state \u201crestructured along hyperpresidential lines\u201d and specialising in \u201cthe mass persecution\u201dof perceived \u201cdissidents, who have been jailed in their thousands.\u201d Where censorship and imprisonment are looming realities for citizens (including writers) who dare to ask questions \u2013 and even occasionally attempt to get their \u201cpoint across\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s possible that the supposed right of poets not to think or care about very much beyond their own line-breaks would smack of empty-headed conformism, rather than the liberty its advocates pretend.<\/p>\n

Perhaps post-doctoral literary scholars of the future will resolve such paradoxes and speculations definitively, for one and for all. For now, readers can occupy themselves with Fog Bells: 8 Contemporary Turkish Poets<\/em><\/a><\/span>, a new bi-lingual anthology from Dedalus Press, carefully curated and translated by Istanbul-based poet, Neil P. Doherty.<\/p>\n

Doherty\u2019s versions pay tribute to the range and vitality of his chosen poets \u2013 spanning multiple generations, but all still in their literary prime. His own style becomes recognisable as the book progresses: each voice he presents has its own kind of under-stated wit and oneirc clarity, catching the rhythms of history in a vivider light. \u201cThe world is a saddleless horse\u201d, observes G\u00f6k\u00e7enur \u00c7., \u201cwe try not to fall off\u201d, though \u201cwe whisper \u2018you couldn\u2019t be real\u2019 \/ into its ear.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is often a philosophical undercurrent surging just below the surface of these writers\u2019 attentions, poem after poem, in the words of Cevat \u00c7apan, \u201ctirelessly \/ seeking for the roots of life itself.\u201d The marginality and strange endurance of human yearnings become connecting threads in the expansive tapestry Doherty draws into billowing life. \u201cThis graveyard we call memory\u201d, notes Elif Sofya, \u201cgrows and grows in our heads\u201d, a \u201chaunting of the body\u201d now metamorphosed into words<\/p>\n

Time and again, the richness and intensity of individual perceptions are balanced \u2013 granted weight and depth \u2013 by a galvanizing recognition of story-telling as a mode of shared (albeit frequently contested) consciousness. Gonca \u00d6zmen thus recalls and elegizes the victims of the Roboski massacre<\/a><\/span>, carried out by the state military against a group of (mostly teenaged) Turkish civilians. \u201cBranches entwined in a verdant forest\u201d give way, in the poem, to \u201carms and legs entwined in an empty forest\u201d, as a spectral crowd of grieving mothers assembles in the aftermath, \u201cday and night clutching these soaking wet photographs\u201d. Mustafa K\u00f6z, similarly, manages to hold the broken world, like a fallen teardrop, in delicate suspension: it \u201cwas for all of you that we exiles set out on the road at dawn\u201d, he sings, \u201cfor the sake of these lands, crushed under bloody, iron heels.\u201d<\/p>\n

The full range of felt emotion \u2013 encompassing grief, joy, whimsy, longing \u2013 seems somehow distilled and honoured in this vibrant anthology. Among other things, its arrival may send a reviving gust of energy through the more insular spaces of Irish culture. Poetry\u2019s horizons have always been broader than the comfortable confines within which many of our cliqued and sinecured gate-keepers have been content to keep it slotted. Its home is the world, and its journeys manifold \u2013 across languages and histories, alive with \u201cthe honour of carrying \/ This light.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review: Fog Bells: 8 Contemporary Turkish Poets (Dedalus Press, 2025) \u201cA writer\u2019s life\u201d, the poet Nick Laird once remarked, with a self-assurance befitting a Royal Society of Literature Fellow, \u201cis a cycle of trying to get to their work, sitting staring at the blank screen, wandering off, steering their reluctant bodies back\u201d to the desk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":246,"featured_media":18400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,14],"tags":[1449,1534,1686,1688,1695,1887,1906,2888,3386,3773,3783,5567,6357,6483,6606,7341,7676,7912,9588,9591,9592],"class_list":["post-18414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literature","category-poetry","tag-cassandra-voices-poetry","tag-cevat-capan","tag-ciaran-o-rourke","tag-ciaran-orourke-cassandra-voices","tag-ciaran-orourke","tag-considered","tag-contemporary","tag-elif-sofya","tag-fog-bells-8-contemporary-turkish-poets","tag-gokcenur-c","tag-gonca-ozmen","tag-literature","tag-mustafa-koz","tag-neil-p-doherty","tag-nick-laird","tag-poetry","tag-recep-erdogan","tag-roboski-massacre","tag-turkish","tag-turkish-poetry","tag-turkish-poetry-in-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}