Ahmed Arif (21 April 1927 in

Siverek Siverek (; ; ) is a municipality and district of Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Its area is 3,936 km2, and its population is 267,942 (2022). Siverek is in the Şanlıurfa province but is geographically closer to the large city of Diyarbakır (a ...

– 2 June 1991 in

Ankara Ankara is the capital city of Turkey and List of national capitals by area, the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the Central Anatolia Region, central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center ( ...

) was a Turkish- Kurdish poet. His father, Arif Hikmet, is an ethnic Turkmen from

Kirkuk Kirkuk (; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate. The city is home to a diverse population of Kurds, Iraqi Turkmen, Iraqi Turkmens and Arabs. Kirkuk sits on the ruins of the original Kirkuk Cit ...

, and his mother Sayre is Kurdish. Ahmed Arif studied

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Ankara University Ankara University () is a public university, public research university in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. It was the first higher education institution founded in Turkey after the History of the Republic of Turkey, formation of the Turkish republ ...

. Arif was arrested on political grounds in 1950 and spent time in prison until 1952. Published in various literary journals, his poems were widely read due to their original lyricism and imagery influenced by

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

n folk cultures. He published only one collection of poetry: Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim (Fetters Worn Out by Longing/1968) – a volume that has gone through a record number of printings. He was among the contributors of the literary magazine '' Papirüs'' which was edited by

Cemal Süreya Cemâl Süreya (born Cemâlettin Seber; 1931 – 9 January 1990) was a Turkish poet and writer of Kurdish– Zaza descent. Biography Süreya and his family were deported to Bilecik, a city in the Marmara Region of Turkey after the Dersim R ...

Ay Karanlık (The Moon Is Dark)

In 2023, the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking (PICT) commenced a project to translate Ahmed Arif's poems into English; so far, 2 open-access translations, both by David Selim Sayers and Evrim Emir-Sayers, have been published online.

References

External links

Poems & Biography Ahmed Arif üzerine website

Kurdish poets 1927 births People from Diyarbakır Ankara University alumni 1991 deaths Turkish-language poets 20th-century Turkish poets {{Kurd-poet-stub

Ay Karanlık (The Moon Is Dark)

See also

References

External links