Book of the Edge

By Ece Temelkuran

Ece Temelkuran is arguably Turkey’s most accomplished young writer. In Book of the Edge, she describes an allegorical journey wherein the speaker, or explorer, encounters strange creatures, including a butterfly, bull, swordfish, sow bug, and cruel city dwellers. These poems point to the undeniable connection between all living beings.

Born 1973 in Turkey, Ece Temelkuran (www.ecetemelkuran.com) has published eight books of poetry, prose, and nonfiction. An award-winning daily columnist for Milliyet, she was a 2008 visiting fellow at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Translator Deniz Perin received the 2007 Anna Akhmatova Fellowship for Younger Translators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781934414613

Ece Temelkuran

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist and political commentator, whose journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times,, Frankfurter Allgemeine and Der Spiegel. She won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book award for her novel Women Who Blow on Knots, and the Ambassador of New Europe Award for her book Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed How to Lose a Country.

Book preview

001

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Offering

I. DOOR - Necessary Things for Any Journey

What You Must Know

What You Must Leave Behind

What You Must Take Along

II. MEADOW - The Explorer Encounters the Virtues in the Shapes of Animals

Butterfly

Black Swan

Bull

Squirrel

Albatross

III. FLIGHT - The Explorer Contemplates What She Has Seen

Flight

Fish

IV. SEA - The Explorer’s ‘Youthful’ Wonderments

Swordfish

The Others of the Sea

V. CITY - The Explorer Encounters Crowds

Rare Fairies

First Play: Your Nape—Your Forehead

Second Play: Claw Marks on Your Nape

Third Play: The Opium of Claws

Fourth Play: Night’s Seed

VI. HOME - The Explorer’s Tranquil Station

Seven Aches

Festival

Sow Bug

House of the Edge

Offering

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Translator

The Lannan Translations Selection Series

Copyright Page

001002

Introduction

Ever since the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the country has often been in a state of political turmoil. In the latter half of the 20th century, three coups d’état overturned the governments of the time: in 1960, 1971, and 1980. Each of these coups was followed by a period of military rule, direct or indirect, and was accompanied by an atmosphere of suppression.

Today, in the 21st century, though the political situation has relatively stabilized, the military continues to play an important role in government, and many Turkish citizens feel that the country is never far from the potential for another coup. The reality is that political prisoners, ethnic tensions, and human rights abuses are as much a part of Turkey’s history and contemporary life as are its mosques, palaces, and hand-woven carpets.

Ece Temelkuran was born in 1973 ; she was seven years old when the 1980 coup d’état, arguably the most brutal and repressive of the three, took place. She grew up in a highly politicized environment: both of her parents were left-wing, social activists. In fact, they had met in jail: when her mother was arrested for leftist activities, her father was the lawyer who helped release her. Growing up in this socially and politically conscious atmosphere, paired with her natural love of writing, led Temelkuran to pursue a career in journalism.

As a journalist, Temelkuran has tackled many highly sensitive issues. In articles, columns, and investigative journalism books, she has addressed such subjects as women’s rights, political prisoners, Armenian-Turkish relations, and the Kurdish problem, as it is frequently referred to in Turkey. Her most recent book, Ağrinn Derinliği (The Deep Mountain), investigates Turkish-Armenian history and the lives of contemporary Armenians. For this book, she interviewed Armenians both in Armenia and Turkey, as well as the Armenian diaspora in France and the United States. During this time, her friend Hrant Dink, a prominent Armenian journalist and human rights activist living in Istanbul, was assassinated by a radically nationalist Turkish youth. Due to its controversial nature, Temelkuran’s book, too, could easily have incited the anger, even the rage, of radical nationalists. Despite the risks, she published the book in 2008.

Temelkuran does not write only about Turkish-related issues. Her work has taken her to several countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. The traveling she did—she lived in many of those places—provided her with a global perspective. We’re Having a Revolution Here, Senorita!, published in 2006, examines Venezuela’s anti-capitalist revolution and argues, based on her discoveries there, that a new world view is possible. Observing power and human rights struggles in her country and across the globe had a deep effect on both her psyche and her writing. In its own, subtle way, her poetry reflects this influence.

The poems in Book of the Edge are not overtly political. Some are not political at all. Those that make political statements do so in an understated, allegorical way. Temelkuran’s goal in these poems is to explore the human condition, exposing our weaknesses and our potential. But her insight into, and interpretation of, this human condition are undoubtedly inspired, at least in part, by