Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur, Turkey, in 1982. She holds a doctorate in English Language & Literature from Istanbul University. Her two books, Kuytumda (2000) and Belki Sessiz (2008) have won several major awards, including the Ali Riza Ertan Prize, the Orhon Murat Arıburnu Prize, and the Berna Moran Poetry Prize. She was among the founding editors of Turkey’s premier translation journal, Çevirmenin Notu (Translator’s Note) and currently edits the poetry monthly, Palto. Her poems have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Slovenian, and Farsi. The Sea Within is the first full-length selection of her work to appear in English. She presently lives in Istanbul.
George Messo is a poet, editor and teacher, and a leading translator of Turkish poetry. His many books include From the Pine Observatory (2000), Entrances (2006), and Hearing Still (2009), as well as two books in Turkish: Aradaki Ses (The In-between Voice, 2005) and Avrupa’nın Küçük Tanrıları (The Little Gods of Europe, 2007). His translations include İlhan Berk’s A Leaf about to Fall: Selected Poems (2006), Madrigals (2008), and Berk’s epic poetic trilogy The Book of Things (2009). His anthologies include İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009) and From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets (2010). He has twice been shortlisted for the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize, and was a Hawthornden Fellow in poetry during 2002. His critical study, Into the Labyrinth: Essays on Modern Turkish Poetry, is forthcoming. Messo is the former editor of Near East Review and in 2008 he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society.
Winter 2011
Table of Contents - Vol. VII, No. 4
Poetry Fiction Translations Reviews
Gonca Özmen
These poems have appeared in Gonca Özmen’s The Sea Within, published by Shearsman Books, U.K. in 2011. This bilingual book represents work from Özmen’s only two books to date, Belki Sessiz (Silent Perhaps, 2008) and Kuytumda (In My Place, 2000).
It was your mouth
Naked wall, intimate door
It was your mouth
Tracing unborn contours
Grass alone changed the climate
I tasted your mouth’s leaf-like bitterness
It was your mouth
Like a felled walnut tree
It gathered all the voices and fled
It was your mouth
My urchin, my absent sky
It was your mouth
And we were still infants in our lovemaking
(between two games)
I’m the one who spills from the river for you
Dirty me
Throw me to night
Night that makes it so
That snapping sound
Fell within me
I thought the world would never turn again
But the world turned once more
That smell of juniper
Remained
Should one of them forget
The other won’t
I’m the one who flows from water to you
Muddy me
Liken me to a crime
And remember me thus
© George Messo
Ağzındı
Ağzındı
Çıplak duvar, mahrem kapı
Ağzındı
Doğmamış dizeler getirip bıraktı
İklim değiştirdi otlar kendiliğinden
Gördüm ağzın yaprak kırgınlığı
Ağzındı
Yıkılan ceviz ağaçları gibi
Tüm sesleri toplayıp gitti
Ağzındı
Sokak çocuğum, eksik göğüm
Ağzındı
Ve çocuktuk hâlâ sevişirken
(iki oyun arası)
Ben bir ırmaktan dökülenim sana
Beni kirlet
Geceye at
Olduran geceye
Çıt sesi içimin
Düştü
Dünya bir daha dönmez sanırdım
Dünya bir daha döndü
O ardıç kokusu
Kaldı
Biri unutsa
Biri unutmaz
Ben bir sudan akanım sana
Beni bulandır
Suça benzet
Öyle anımsa
