TURKISH POETRY ACROSS CULTURES

CONTEMPORARY TURKISH POETRY ACROSS CULTURES

 

Date: March 5, 2011

Venue: KUMBARACI50, Kumbaracı Yokuşu No:50, Tünel, Beyoğlu.

Session I – 11.00-13.00 (Bilingual session)
Poetry Translation Workshop (from English to Turkish)
Moderators:
Barış Pirhasan (poet-translator-film director)
Senem Öner (Translation Studies scholar; Istanbul Arel University, Lecturer)

Lunch Break – 13.00-13.45 – Alaylı Cafe

Session II – 13.45 – 14.45 (English)
Panel & Discussion: Translation of İkinci Yeni and Contemporary Turkish Poetry
Speakers:
Richard Tillinghast (Author, translator, lecturer)
Julia Clare Tillinghast (Author, translator, lecturer)
Donny Smith (Author, translator, lecturer)
Moderator: Mel Kenne (Author, translator, lecturer)

Coffee Break – 14.45-15.00

Session III – 15.00-15.30 (Multilingual Session)
Contemporary Turkish Poetry Reading in World Languages  / Moderator: Filip Szymborski

Ahmed Arif – “Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim”, “DESGASTÉ GRILLOS AÑORÁNDOTE” . Translated into Spanish by Pepa Baamonde and İrfan Güler.

“Sevdan Beni”, “O Teu Amor”. Translated into Galician language by Pepa Baamonde and İrfan Güler.

“Ay Karanlık”, “Hîv Tarî”. Translated into Kurdish by Ferat Dilgeş.

Şeref Bilsel – “Verasus”. Translated into English by Mesut Şenol.

Metin Fındıkçı– Translated into Arabic by Abir Zeki & Musa Hevemdeh.

Nâzım Hikmet – “Şehir, Akşam ve Sen” , “A Cidade A Tarde E Ti”. Translated into Galician Language by Pepa Baamonde & İrfan Güler.

Murathan Mungan – “Sizden Saklı” translated into Polish by Filip Szymborski.

Barış Pirhasan – “Martılar” translated into  English by Jean Carpenter Efe.

Mesut Şenol – “Aşk Ölmez” translated into Ukrainian by Natalka Bilocerkivec

Mehmet Yaşin – “Savaş Zamanı” translated into English by Taner Baybars and into Greek by Anthi Karra. 

SPEAKERS & MODERATORS

BARIŞ PİRHASAN

Pirhasan graduated from the Department of  English Language and Literature at Bogazici University.

His poetry books are Tarih Kotudur (History Is Evil / 1981) and Imzasız El Yazıları (Anonymous Manuscripts / 1985)

Being granted a scholarship from the British Council, Pirhasan studied Film and TV Directing at the National Film and Television School in England between 1989-1992. He holds  national and international awards with his films and screenplays.

Pirhasan is one of the most remarkable translators with his translations of Karl Marx, Lewis Carroll, Constantine Cavafy, Walter Scott, e.e. cummings, Leonard Cohen, Tim Burton.

To view a translation of Pirhasan’s poem  ”Martılar” [Seagulls] by Jean Carpenter-Efe, click here. To view the IEC Barış Pirhasan page click here.

SENEM ÖNER

Senem Öner graduated from the Translation Studies Department of Bogazici University in 2002. She holds an MA degree from the Cultural Studies department of Bilgi University. On her ongoing PhD studies at the doctoral program of Yıldız Technical University,  she mainly focuses on lawmaking through/as translation. Her translation of Ahlâki Protesto Sanatı, Toplumsal Hareketlerde Kültür, Biyografi ve Yaratıcılık was published in 2002 by Ayrıntı Publications. The main concepts she dwells on in her studies are translation criticism, gender and translation, translation and cultural identity, lawmaking and translation. Senem Öner is a lecturer at Arel University Translation Department.

MEL KENNE

Mel Kenne has had four books of poetry published and a sequence of his poems was recorded on compact disk in a musical / poetic / dramatic production entitled The Book of Ed. He was a winner of the Austin Book Award in 1984, for his collection of poems South Wind. His most recent collection, Galata’dan / The View from Galata, was published this year as a bilingual edition by Yapı Kredi Yayınları, in Istanbul, with the original text rendered into Turkish by Ipek Seyalıoglu. Kenne has also translated Turkish, Spanish and French poetry into English, and he and Saliha Paker translated two novels by Turkish author Latife Tekin, Dear Shameless Death and Swords of Ice, which were published by Marion Boyars Publishers in 2000 and 2007 respectively. He has lived in Istanbul since 1993 and presently works as a lecturer in the American Culture and Literature Department at Kadir Has University.

DONNY SMITH

Donny Smith grew up in a small town in the US and now teaches in Istanbul. His collection of Lâle Müldür translations, I Too Went to the Hunt of a Deer, was published in 2008. His own collection of poetry, Was Gone and Has Gone and Was Gone, also appeared that year. His translations of Wenceslao Maldonado’s book Si cortarle la cabeza a la Gorgona and of Cemal Sureyya’s Üvercinka have recently been published.

 RICHARD TILLINGHAST

Richard Tillinghast is the author of ten books of poetry. The most recent are The New Life, 2008, Sewanee Poems, and Selected Poems, both 2009, as well as Dirty August, translations from the Turkish poet Edip Cansever, also 2009, in collaboration with Julia Clare Tillinghast. For their Cansever translations, the father-daughter team received a grant from the NEA. In 2008 Richard also published Finding Ireland: A Poet’s Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture. He has received grants from the Irish Arts Council, the British Council, and the NEH, was awarded the Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship from Harvard, and is a 2010-11 Guggenheim Fellow. Richard first visited Istanbul as a student in the 1960s, and is a frequent visitor.

 

JULIA CLARE TILLINGHAST

Julia Clare Tillinghast, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, studied poetry as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She lived in Istanbul from 2004-2008, where she worked, briefly, as an advertising copywriter, and then as an English teacher at private language schools, and, eventually, at Bilgi University. In addition to having translations published in Agni, The Boston Review, Guernica, and elsewhere, her original poems have appeared in Northern Passages and Sou’Wester and her poem “Saturday Elegies, Blacksburg,” was a runner-up for the Poetry Society of Virginia Prize. She will receive her Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Virginia Tech in 2011. She currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, with her son Hamza.

FILIP SZYMBORSKI

EFL teacher and translator, currently living in Istanbul. Studied History of Art at Warsaw University. Started as a journalist at Business Week and the Warsaw Voice and has been teaching for six years. Szymborski speaks English, Czech, Polish, Ukranian and Turkish.