'We are finally alive': Poetry books by three prisoners

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Garibe Gezer, Abdurrezak Şuyur, Halil Güneş, Bangin Muhammed, Vedat Erkmen... The names of the prisoners who lost their lives between November and December 2021. According to the Human Rights Association (İHD), 59 prisoners lost their lives in 2021. Again, according to the İHD figures, there are 1,605 ill prisoners in Turkey's prisoners, with 604 of them being seriously ill. Aysel Tuğlul, Mehmet Emin Özkan and Devrim Ayık are three of those.

It is likely that we will witness more coffins coming out of prisons in the new years as long as this approach to ill prisoners continues.

While the government's policies that cause coffins coming out of prisons continue, prisoners continue to write, draw and produce as well. They express that being confined does not prevent ideas. In defiance of the policies that cause deaths, they express that they exist with literature, poems, novels, stories and with words as a whole.

Poetry books by Sami Çomak, Welat Esen and Cengiz Sinan Çelik were the works that made the prisoners' voices heard from outside.

İlhan Sami Çomak says "We are finally alive"

İlhan Sami Çomak has been kept in prison for 28 years. He is one of the people who spent the longest time in prison in Turkey without conviction. His new poetry book "We are Finally Alive" has been published by the Manor Publisinh House. Having published several books before, he released his autobiography titled "Not Destroying the Anthill" (Karınca Yuvasını Dağıtmamak) in 2021.

Çomak is a prisoner who has succeeded in existing through writing and, in this way, made his voice heard by large audiences. He received literary awards for his writings.

In the introduction of his new book, Çomak says:

"Take me away from here, I have seen a lot

I saw for a long time, I sorrowed for a long time

Now is the time of springs, of wind in the trash field

And of the gates of the big day to open

It is the time of the vastness

where my shivering legs are walking towards the horizon

Welat Esen's Kurdish poems

Like İlhan Sami Çomak, Welat Esen has been in prison for a long time; for 26 years to be exact. With his poems, won an award in the 8th Arjen Ari Poetry Competition. The Sor Publishing House published Esen's file as a book titled, "Ev Rû, Ev Xerîbî" (This Face, This Strangeness).

With his poems, Esen takes readers to the olive groves, gardens full of fig and pomegranate trees, and mountains of Derik, Mardin, where he was born.

In the poem "Darhinar" (Pomegranate Tree), he says:

"Delalê dil deranî da destê delêl

çû vezeliya li ber siya dara hinêr"

(The lover took out his heart and put it in the hand of his love

Then he lied in the shade of the pomegranate tree)

Cengiz Sinan Çelik says "Serdestan"

The last book is Cengiz Sinan Çelik's "Serdestan." The Ayrıntı Publishing House released the book. Çelik, who has been in prison for 25 years, previously received awards for his poems in Turkish and Kurdish (Zazaki/Kirmanckî).

These three poetry books tell us that what we call "prison literature" is not only about life in prison. Maybe prison life is the thing it tells the least.

Like poet Ahmed Arif says, "Night comes early in prison" but prisoners, defying the early night, put nature, love, revolt, music, insects, longing in the center of their poems, novels and stories, and more importantly, of their lives. They mold them and deliver them to the readers behind the walls. (FD/VK)