Serpil Devrim, Turkey

Serpil Devrim Member of IWA Bogdani 

Born in 06 January 1960 in İstanbul-Turkey

Her interest and love for poetry and literature began in her middle school years.

Speaks English and German.

She graduated High School.

She completed her certificate programs related to her profession in Turkey and Canada.

She worked in Istanbul as an IATA agent and foreign trade company owner for 15 years and she moved to Canada. She worked at İnternational Logistic company and lived there for 12 years. After returning to Turkey, she started to publish her works.

Has a daughter named Nazli.

Poetry Books:

At the Birth of day  / Çıngı Publishing/ 2012-İstanbul-Turkey

One half is half done / Artshop Publishing/ 2017-İstanbul-Turkey

The road was ending / Kaynak Publishing/2014-İstanbul-Turkey

Pain of the Earth/ Artshop Publishing/2018-İstanbul-Turkey

Short Stories:

Purple alphabet women / Artshop Publishing/2017-İstanbul-Turkey

Novel:

Like water / Mühür Publishing/2016-İstanbul-Turkey

Serpil Devrim has won the Muammer Hacıoğlu Literary Award for her book One Half is Half Done in April 2018.

In her poetry, she focuses on social issues, inspired by real life. She also writes love poems, socialist and lyric lines. Her poems, her novel and her stories are racial, violence and war against and she read her poems in diffferent radio and television channels and shared her humanist views with listeners and viewers.

One Half is Half Done was translated to Russian and Bulgarian in 2017-2018, Purple Alphabet Women and Like Water were translated to Bulgarian in 2018. Her poem named Wall was translated to Italian and published in an Italian literature magazinein 2018. The poems Wall, Hold My Dead Branches, and The Poem of the 100th Day were translated to  Balkanian Languages and published in Balkan Literary Herald magazine in 2018. Also was translated to Bulgarian and published in another literary magazine ; Balkanski Književni Glasnik in 2019 and some poems published in Femina Literature Magazine in Uzbekistan and published English, Turkish and Arabic Samama İnternational Literature Magazine in Morocco in 2018, and Afaqhorra Literature Magazine in Jordan.

Many of her poems and short stories were published in different literature magazines in Turkey.Some of these magazines are: Kasabadan Esinti, Menekşe, Bodrum Gündem, Berfin Bahar, Adalya, Tmolos Edebiyat, Aratos, Lacivert and Mühür.

She has taken place at many different international poetry festivals such as : Feminİstanbul, Bodrum Bineali and Kalimerhaba.

She is involved with many charities and works with disabled and homeless children.

She lives in Bodrum.

She is a member of the PEN İnternational Writers Associatıon in Turkey.

 

The Poem of the 100th Day

vinedresser, i linked my voice to sky, erase death

i am a stone-sculptor tonight i linked my voice to sky

my eyes sculpted what outweighed them

the crowd of my outside, the isolation of my inside

sculpted gently the side of me that was offended by life

i took it to the city square and left it there

i’m too lonely for anyone to notice me

my apprenticeship of stone age is a rodent in my chest cavity

my semi-skilled working, my bronze age,

the slip-of-tongue wing of whirligig

my iron age is my mastership, by inner beauty that attracts the devil

in a sleazy capstan-free well the cementer’s cap

vinedresser, i linked my voice to sky, erase death

i am a stone-sculptor tonight i linked my voice to sky

i sculpted what outweighed my tongue

seven generations, seven shirts off of the back of the stone

young and old alike the great powers off of the belly of the stone

i spilled from my skirt ash-colored and rose-scented

i took my heart out and loaded my emotional clamorous side

onto the hands of a callow off-tune musician

i sculpted the earth to cleanse it of its dirt

the lifeguard with little room and a large heart rang the bell

blew its whistle its vigorous siren

quite appropriate for a tale, quite against the genuine

the bite in her throat turned out to be a hard row to hoe

put her seamy lustful foot down

vinedresser, i linked my voice to sky, erase death

i am a stone-sculptor tonight i linked my voice to sky

two acrobats on one tightrope, impatient and fond of comfort,

the one heavily seethed the one whose face is down

the fond one and the one with no dreams all of them is a memory loss

their skulls are the size of a huge cave each of them

i eroded the surface, took it out, slam it down

my flesh blood and memory thought

it wouldn’t be heard when slammed

the joy of cleansing gleamed on the cutter

vinedresser, i linked my voice to sky, erase death

i am a stone-sculptor tonight i linked my voice to sky

i sculpted my heart, open wounds around it apparent

people passed by, passed away, hunger hasn’t had enough yet

The Dead Poet

the dead poet is a river exiled from its bed

its gurgle is without foot or rhyme

its flow is the linear of existence

the path it knows is courageous and open

water takes the form of the container

dress the form of the body in it

and the chewn bits the form of the mouth

the bed of the poet for the outbursts

is like the narrow Aegean shores

the Cretan promontory

its two sides are the song of goats

and a lyric poem blessed with immortality

on the land of the dead

its heart never decays

the river exiled from its bed

stripped of its privacy

it brings down stars from the sky

and bathes in its own water

it’s hilly and rocky when seen from the sea

when seen from the land there are crazy blue waves only

with their hard-line freedom

it sweeps before itself the ways

landless peasants walk on

and the aid sailors seek

it grows out of the labors

of workers and splitters

and lies next to dead children

decapitated at each war

it had sad eyes at each break up

it gurgles to death

with fragile loves at its core

 

Hold My Dead Branches !

                                                                           “my soul was a door handle

                                                                             as my mind never matched the steps”

the brunette refugee child with otherworldly descriptions

who lands down on the cage of my chest fluttering

your face is the gap called wound this evening

your eyes were a single country, the whole earth

the insensitivity of this era is a death trap

the thundering robbery, plunder, pillage of an avalanche

with its cooperative loam the red-brown marsh

depth and the subsiding weight do go away

lacking humanity that makes it lose its way

it has no roof to wash ashore or to take shelter

in september the unhugged body the surplus of water

the iceberg drifting from where it belongs is just like you

woven for the outer world a long time ago

its fragile body lessens by moments, from which

it adds itself to the water that will drown us all

wherever i turn the speed of light is the same

one’s circle, occasionally recurring mercy sprinkle

which pours down on the sift of the sky

from a long distance

Hold my dead branches ! Hold my dead branches !

let the dead leaf fall !

let my crooked branch flatten…