 |
Kemalettin Kamu -- Poet (b. 15
September 1901, Bayburt - d. 6 March 1948,
Ankara). He was at the final year at
İstanbul Teachers Training School for Boys
when the Turkish National Independence War
began; therefore he left for Ankara (1920).
He worked at the Publications and
Information Directorate and the Anatolian
Agency. When the war was over, he went back
to İstanbul and received his diploma and
studied political science in Paris for five
years, where he was sent as an Anatolian
Agency correspondent (1933). On his return,
he was elected as the parliamentary deputy
of Rize (1939) and Erzurum (1943-46). He is
buried at Cebeci Graveyard. |
The poems of Kamu, known as the
Poet of the Foreign Land in Turkish literature, were
published in the review Büyük Mecmua during the years of
the armistice (1919), and in Dergâh during the years of
the Independence War (1921) and later in the reviews
Varlık (1933-34) and Oluş (1939); his articles were
published in newspapers Hakimiyet-i Milliye and Yenigün.
His poems, which he wrote in syllabic and prosodic
meter, on war, love and foreign lands, were collected in
the book Kemalettin Kamu, Hayatı, Şahsiyeti ve Şiirleri
(Kemalettin Kamu, His Life, Character and Poems by Rıfat
Necdet Evrimer, 1949). His poems in prosodic meter
demonstrate interesting examples of the implementation
of prosodic meter in Turkish during the Republican Era.
Furthermore, during his years in Paris, he was
interested in French poetry and translated three poems
of the French symbolist poet Mallarmé.
| On the Road to Smyrnia
Perhaps before I wrote to you
My last
words
My eyes will
shut
Perhaps
within five or ten
Minutes in
time
I thought in
the presence
Of an
eternal evening
I thought of
whats left
Of twenty
two years of the time I spent
With my
father
I ask you
mother
For the time
will come
Everyone of
us will bow
In front of
the same angel
Why should I
hear the sound
Of the bell
until that time?
Today is the
same as tomorrow
Let me sleep
At the gate of Smyrna.
Inside Time Once Open a Time
Two brothers in my room
One is yesterday and the other is tomorrow
And I am the bridge in
the middle
Kemalettin Kamu
(1901-1948) |
| The Mirror
A mirror in
a blind mans hand
Reflects his
face to him
He touches
it with his fingers
Seeks for
his eyes in silence
My eyes Dear
God where are they?
In which
rivers in which floods?
Theres a
curtain wherever I turn my face
Where shall
I seek for his trace
I know my
face is inside the mirror
My day is
night my night is day
My eyes
reach him before me
Only sadness remains
Ahmet Kutsi Tecer
(1901-1967) |
posted 9 March 2006 |
