DESIGNING A POEM - Lecture by Efe Duyan at the Iowa University - International Literature Today Course
It is lovely to be here. It's lovely to be here,
the weather is still hot mid-September. Even
this jacket seems to be a bit too much.
I was thinking about what I should wear. It's
not easy. If you go to a beach with a shirt
and jacket, that would be weird. If you go
to a class with a swimming suit, that would
be even weirder.
This is the unusual nature of forms. Because
there is no universally beautiful form in
itself. Everyone in the world has a different
viewpoint, everyone has different things to
say, and everything that said deserves a form
that suits itself.
The form always gives a buried message, even
if you make sure it does not, it will provide
THAT as a message.
So how to decide on the form? Of course, a
mirror would help but...
But it also helps to bring the primary motivation
for writing into the equation. What is MY
main issue? Why do I write?
On the one hand, the politically catastrophic
climate of Turkey brings pressing issues in
one's agenda, and it turns your direct perception
of the world into a very tragic one. So I
simply take the pen and try to imagine a better
world, which is not this hell I happen to
live now and then.
On the other hand, I am enthusiastic about
digging deep inside me to understand myself,
to make sense of my emotions -fear, joy, shame,
satisfaction. To make sense of your complex
self, you might need a complex language, too.
So it is not only me. When you look at Modern
Turkish poetry, different traditions fit the
previous motivations for my writing.
On the one hand, the Turkish language has
a very long history of political poetry based
on the folk poets going back to a thousand-year
before. Furthermore, the first completely
modern Turkish poet is Nâzım Hikmet, a devoted
communist and an avant-garde from the 1920s.
He combined lyrism with his political agenda
around of his adventurous and tragic life
story. He was mainly a realist, except for
some fascinating examples. Many had tried
to follow his path copying him and failed.
On the other hand, it might also be possible
to observe a distant echo of the classical
Ottoman court poetry in the ears of the modern
poets, a tradition, which has skillfully exaggerated
emotions and expressed them in a highly stylistic
way, where figures of speech are used extensively.
And how do I place myself? There are TWO different
tendencies, which seem very
appealing to me.
This dilemma is the SOLUTION itself as I base
my poetry on bringing these two spheres together.
To face who I am in a personal way and to
face the world politically. I choose both.
So, what kind of form would suit this duality?
To achieve the goal of being simultaneously
rational and subjective, I USE clearly structured
forms, and I LET my pen move freely.
FOR EXAMPLE, one of the most frequent strategies
I use is developing the theme by making variations
of an element throughout the poem:
I repeat that element, which has a particular
linguistic structure, and in each repetition,
I make a variation of it according to the
flow. I fill that unit with a different material
each time so that I jump from a metaphor to
another. This gives me a rigid structure connecting
everything in the poem, while I also have
the independence and flexibility to play with
the surreal.
This is one strategy for a specific problem,
of course, there are others for other themes
and objectives. I may never stick to a specific
technique, but I do DESIGN every poem. Yes,
not only write, but I consider myself also
designing the text. It does not mean I don’t
let myself write freely. On the contrary,
it is because of this. I need the design so
that I can balance the flow and keep everything
together.
It was vital for me to give a tailor-made
form to each poem. I usually have a main idea,
that is my starting point, my question. This
single-use-only form should come out of the
main idea, and it should represent and reproduces
it.
The form is the skin of what I say, and without
its flesh, it would be different. A good poem
is where neither the form nor the content
can exist without each other. They must co-exist.
They must complement each other. They must
form a unique unity. Not because I want it
to be unique, but because uniqueness guarantees
that I find the only and perfect fit for my
main idea.
THE ROAD FROM THE MAIN IDEA TO THE UNIQUE
END PRODUCT IS PAVED WITH THE STONES OF FORM-CONTENT
UNITY.
And all of these happen in the language. This
means I bend the language itself during this
play of form and content. If you bend the
language, if you force it to the limits of
the grammar, you can create a space between
the poetry and daily language. The reader
can get into that space -to that house of
difference- and see the world from a different
point of view. This house is a safe, tolerant,
fascinating, intriguing, and provocative home.
Different from everywhere, made of mirrors
and its walls transparent, you face yourself,
and you face the world.
I try to wander around inside the language.
I don’t rule over the language, No one can.
It is like nature, you can only think that
you rule over it.
BUT you can respectfully build your home,
your space with own words. I know that I am
not a master of the language, I am a student
of it. We are all.
