POETRY
Turkish Literature / Turkish Poetry
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Nihilist Alarm
— POEM by
Furkan Çirkin
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Is that alarm stubborn? – It was: I woke up;
What did I wake up from and whatever for: unconscious awakening.
Let us call it “I woke up from you, I woke up to you”;
(Let’s call the alarm “he loves alarm” or something of the sort).
As what you call poetry is written for you, not me.
I thought of the lightness of a hollow sleep;
The lightness of a dreamless and nightmare-free sleep;
A sleep that is not beautiful and repulsive, good and bad;
(Nothing can be as light as a “nothing”).
And the lightest is indeed the weightiest.
I’ve seen girls my age with budding breasts;
I saw it in my sleep, wakefulness.
As they were light, their breasts never drooped;
(Lightness! You know, hug and plump).
The contradiction is the cause and the effect of everything.
….
(Self-translation from TURKISH)
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Furkan Çirkin
Furkan Çirkin is a poet, editor and academic. He received two bachelor’s degrees in law and philosophy, a master’s degree and a PhD from Istanbul University. Additionally, he is a PhD(c) for his second PhD and an assistant lecturer at the University of Essex. And currently, he lives in Colchester with his wife, curator and artist Hiromi Horiuchi. His poems have been published in many respected poetry journals, including Varlik, the oldest one, and translated into many languages, including French, Italian, Persian and Romanian. Also, he has been publishing Yelkensiz Poetry Journal in Turkey since 2013. So far, he has three poetry books: Nihilist Alarm, Ser/h, and My Life: A Colourful Pitch-Dark. Moreover, he translated Percy Bysshe Shelley’s book “The Mask of Anarchy” into Turkish. Besides, he is a member of Advisory Board at Poetry Translation Centre in London. And, he holds numerous prestigious poetry awards in Turkey.
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— POEM by Furkan Çirkin