Talks On Edip Cansever

Talks On Edip Cansever - I

15 March 2022 Tue

Contextualizing Poetry of Edip Cansever Today
Guests: Anita Sezgener, Gonca Özmen

“Water Reverie” exhibition at Haunted Mansion is comprised of works selected from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection by looking at Edip Cansever’s poem bearing the same title. During the pandemic the show is presented on various online platforms like a 360-degree virtual exhibition tour and “Water Reverie” art walk application. In the context of the public program of the exhibition the curator of the show Dr. Necmi Sönmez will moderate a talk with poets Gonca Özmen and Anita Sezgener who are also known with their multidisciplinary works. As one of the important figures in modern poetry of Turkey, Edip Cansever created a hermetic poetics which is hard to make sense of in a first reading. The talk aims to focus on the links between poetry and daily life as well as to review Cansever’s world of imagery that approaches the agenda of his time in Turkey through metaphors.

Biographies

Gonca Özmen
Born in 1982 in Burdur, Tefenni. She was graduated from Department of English Language and Literature at İstanbul University in 2004. In the same department she completed her master’s degree in 2008 and her PhD in 2016. Her first poem was published in Varlık magazine in 1997. She got a “special mention” at the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Youth Rewards in the same year. In the following years her poetry books are published: Kuytumda (Hera, 2000), Belki Sessiz (Yapı Kredi, 2008)and Bile İsteye (Kırmızı Kedi, 2019). Her poems are translated into English, German, French, Spanish, Slovenian, Italian, Dutch, Romanian, Persian, Greek and Hebrew. Her selected poems were published in UK by Shearsman Books with the title The Sea Within [İçerdeki Deniz] in 2011. Her second book Belki Sessiz was published in Germany by Elif Verlag under the title Vielleicht Lautlos in 2017. She stayed in Split, Croatia as a guest poet with a scholarship in July 2014. She participated various poetry festivals abroad and received many rewards. She got the Yunus Nadi Poetry Award with her latest poetry book, Bile İsteye in 2020. She prepared for publication Çağdaş İrlanda Şiiri Seçkisi [Contemporary Irish Poetry Anthology] (Edisam, 2010) and Çiğnenmiş Gül (Yapı Kredi, 2011) composed of unpublished poems of İlhan Berk after his death. She served as a member of editorial boards of literature magazines Pulbiber and Çevrimdışı İstanbul as well as translated literary magazine Ç.N. [Çevirmenin Notu / Translator’s Note]. She also translated children’s books including Syndey Smith’s Small in the City [Şehirdeki Küçük] (Kırmızı Kedi, Şubat 2020), Sylvia Plath’s Mrs. Cherry’s Kitchen [Kiraz Hanım’ın Mutfağı] (Kırmızı Kedi, Eylül 2020), Jordan Scott’s I Talk Like a River [Bir Nehir Gibi Konuşurum] (Kırmızı Kedi, Mart 2021), Donna Guthrie’s Flibbertibigetty Words [Uçarı Kaçarı Sözcükler] (Kırmızı Kedi, Mayıs 2021) and Joanne Schwartz’s The Town is by the Sea [translated as Babamı Beklerken] (Kırmızı Kedi, Şubat 2022). She served in the advisory boards of Bursa Nilüfer International Poetry Festival, Rhodes, Greece based Seas Writers’, Translator’s Council and Turkish Poetry Today magazine which is annually published by Red Hand Books. in UK. These days she is working as an editor of Küçük İskender books planned to be published by Can Yayınları. She is also translating Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems into Turkish. Since 2000 she lives in İstanbul.

Anita Sezgener

Born in 1971 in İstanbul and comes from a Sephardic Jewish family. Her poems, texts, interviews and translations were published in many magazines. For Nod Yayınları she translated Anne Carson’s Short Talks [Kısa Konuşmalar], Raymond Federman’s The Voice in the Closet [Dolaptaki Ses] and Jennifer Martenson’s Xq28¹. She draws archetypical things for books and book covers. As a visibility project for women, she prepares the culture-arts-literature zine Cin Ayşe since 2008. She is one of the editors of poetry zine Moreo Fanzin. Since 2017 she’s the mother of Alina. She has published many books: Pusu Bilici (Norgunk, 2008), Taşlık (Yasakmeyve, 2011), Hafif Zehirler (Pan, 2012), Normalia (Nod Yayınları, 2014), Çok Sesi (Heterotopya, 2015), Tikkun Olam: Walter Benjamin Şiirleri (Nod Yayınları, 2017), Nabız Kayıt (Nod Yayınları, 2020) ve Aritmi Koridoru: Toplu Yazılar (Everest Deneme, Eylül 2020). The art book she made with her daughter Alina Asan, She Threw the Rope and Pulled the Lake was published by an independent Polish publishing house Bored Wolves. In September 2021 she participated the exhibition “Why Do Poets Paint? New Ways of Existence About ‘In-Between’ Stances” curated by Necmi Sönmez and designed by Ulaş Uğur at Antalya Kültür Sanat.

Dr. Necmi Sönmez

He completed his PhD in Art History at Frankfurt, Paris, Newcastle Universities. Sönmez worked as a curator at Museum Folkwang, Kunstverein Arnsberg, FRAC, Staatliche Museen Berlin and Kunstmuseum Bochum. He continues to work on the migration monument to be installed at Stiftung Zollverein, Essen. 

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