“One Image, One Concept: Post-2000 Turkish Poetry Poets Colloquium” organized at Samsun University

A program titled “One Image, One Concept: Post-2000 Turkish Poetry Poets Colloquium” was organized at Samsun University in order to examine which image and concept the poets who wrote poems after 2000 saw their poetic search around. The colloquium, organized on an online platform in cooperation with Samsun University Turkish Language and Literature Department and Thought and Art Center (DÜSAM), consisted of three separate panels.

The first panel of the colloquium, moderated by Servet Gündoğdu, started with Asuman Susam’s speech titled “Khora/Khora”. Expressing that the concept and the image are intertwined for her and that it is not possible for them to separate, Asuman Sesame said ” “The concept of Khora is a concept that I borrowed from philosophy and transformed it into poetry.”

After Asuman Susam’s speech, the first panel continued with Alphan Akgül’s speech titled “1/2gt2/ Logopoeia”. Akgül, who started his speech by explaining what an image is, said ” Poetry actually enables us to reproduce images that we cannot experience in the outside world in the form of

cut/paste/transform/manipulate or in the form of various collages.” He explained Ezra Pound’s concept of Logopoeia as “a dance of intelligence, a show of intelligence between words and ideas” and stated that 1/2gt2 is an image after it is mentioned in Melih Cevdet Anday’s poem.

The second panel of the colloquium, moderated by Günil Özlem Ayaydın Cebe, started with Hayriye Ünal’s speech titled “Imaginary or Concrete Animals/Installation in Poetry”. Hayriye Ünal started her speech by saying ” Animals have always occupied the human imagination, and animals are the first moving thing we pay attention to since the beginning of childhood.” and she drew attention to the place of the animal in literature and art. Ünal defined montage poetry as “the uniqueness in bringing together unusual elements”. She emphasized that montage is a process, not a result, and ended her speech with the examples she gave.

Fırat Caner, the second speaker of the second panel, started his speech titled “Suppressed Resentment/Dedication” with the concept of “Dedication”. He said that ever since he started writing the poem, he has always dreamed of dead great poets sitting at a table After explaining the concept of “dedication”, he referred to Nietzsche and the Arabic word “hıkd” to explain the image of “Repressed Resentment” and said: “When I look at myself, I see that I am not virtuous enough to forgive, but not strong enough to respond fairly. The sense of helplessness created by my lack of strength creates a feeling of anger/resentment. On the other hand, facing the fact that I don’t have the virtue to forgive also creates a feeling of resentment.”

The second panel ended with Halil İbrahim Polat’s speech titled “Architecture/Space/Loneliness”. Polat, who started his speech by mentioning that it is difficult to distinguish the image and concept from each other or to separate them with definite limits, said: “Architecture, design, space concepts are the instruments of the human sense of responding to or reaching solitude. Because you will accept that architecture is not just a housing problem. The place where the architect can conceptualize the space can point to a plane. The images also in the poem can imply the enthusiasm of the poem within the framework of its uniqueness.
The last panel of the colloquium started with Nilay Özer’s speech titled “Body/Sexuality”, moderated by Kaan Kurt. In her speech, Özer talked about the place and position of the image and concept of “body/sexuality” in her own poetry writing process and what kind of ways it opened up for her while examining other poems and said: “The structure of a poem or the whole of a finished poem is like producing a spare body, that’s how I perceive it.” Özer also pointed out that the relationship established between poetry and the body is also established between poetry and sexuality.

The second speaker of the third panel was İsmail Aslan with his speech titled “First Loss/Mourning”. Aslan, who started his words by saying ” I will try to address the source of my poem with an image and a concept focus.”, stated that the first separation of man is from the mother’s womb and that the first reality of man in this world is separation. Continuing his speech by defining the concept of mourning, İsmail Aslan talked about his poetry book “Aslında Eksikten Oradan”.

The third panel ended with Murat Saldıray’s speech titled “Blurred Mirrors/Tradition”. Saldıray started his speech by saying that thanks to this colloquium, he once again understood that the dilemma of Turkish poetry in the last fifty-sixty years is the image. Explaining the “Fuzzy Mirrors” image, Saldıray said “Actually, it is not the mirror that is blurred, it is the image in the mirror that is blurred, but I think the mirror itself is blurry.” Explaining his views on the concept of tradition, Murat Saldıray said, “As all great poets produce works, they are subject to a sequence. When a young or new poet produces a work, she/he takes her/his place in that circle.” Saldıray concluded his speech by saying that he took Sheikh Galip’s attitude to transcend tradition as an example.

After the third panel, the participants made evaluations. After the evaluations, “One Image, One Concept: Post-2000 Turkish Poetry Poets Colloquium” ended.