Essays & Writings

  • Simple as Water, Clear as a Gunshot

    Simple as Water, Clear as a Gunshot

    Forty-nine poems selected from four books by the Syrian poet Riad Saleh Hussein, translated from the Arabic by Mehmet Hakkı Suçin, are now out from Ayrıntı Publishing. Some poets’ voices reach far beyond their short lives.

  • Najwan Darwish’s Poetry through Words at the Gate of Jerusalem

    Najwan Darwish’s Poetry through Words at the Gate of Jerusalem

    Taking the selection Kudüs’ün Kapısında Kelimeler as its starting point, this essay examines how Najwan Darwish turns the Palestinian experience into an original poetic world through time, place, identity, memory, language, irony and form.

  • On the Threshold of a Text: Kahlil Gibran and The Prophet

    On the Threshold of a Text: Kahlil Gibran and The Prophet

    A personal journey of reading and translation that began years ago with Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet… Ranging from Gibran’s life to the birth of the work, from its poetic language to its mystical world of thought and its original drawings, this essay approaches The Prophet both through the translator’s eyes and as a literary and…

  • Representations of the Mediterranean in Four Mediterranean Poets: al-Manasra, Darwish, al-Jarrah and Montale

    Representations of the Mediterranean in Four Mediterranean Poets: al-Manasra, Darwish, al-Jarrah and Montale

    In the texts of Ezzedine al-Manasra, Mahmoud Darwish, Nouri al-Jarrah and Eugenio Montale, the Mediterranean is a poetic space of memory, exile, identity, belonging and existence. This essay offers a comparative reading of the intersecting and diverging relationships these four Mediterranean poets build with the sea.

  • Crossroads in Palestinian Literature

    Crossroads in Palestinian Literature

    Researchers today generally divide Palestinian literature into four periods: the pre-Nakba period, the period between the Nakba and the Naksa, the post-Naksa period and, following from it, the post-Oslo period.

  • From the Divan to the Digital: A look at Turkey’s Rich Tradition of Poetry

    From the Divan to the Digital: A look at Turkey’s Rich Tradition of Poetry

    Political, intellectual and social trends have influenced the country’s popular literary rhythms from its earliest and deepest roots. This is their story. Mehmet Hakki Suçin 12 March 2024 (This is an abridged translation, made for this site, of an article published in Arabic. Click here for the original Arabic article. )   Ancient Turkish literature…

  • Turkish Literature in Other Tongues

    Turkish Literature in Other Tongues

    A closer look at the translation activities in the geography that shares certain common cultures with Turkey, six major translation junctions can be discerned: the Baghdad-centered translation movement, the Toledo movement in Andalusia, the era of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, the Ottoman Translation Chamber, the Translation Office in the Turkish Republic period, and the TEDA…

  • Mahmoud Darwish’s New Poetic Adventure: Like Almond Blossoms or Farther

    Mahmoud Darwish’s New Poetic Adventure: Like Almond Blossoms or Farther

    Mahmoud Darwish’s Like Almond Blossoms or Farther differs in many respects from his earlier collections. With this book, first published in 2005, Darwish’s loud-voiced lines gave way to a different understanding of poetry in both form and content.

  • A Key Name in the Arabic Short Story: Yahya Haqqi

    A Key Name in the Arabic Short Story: Yahya Haqqi

    As a storyteller, critic and stylist, Yahya Haqqi still holds a key role in modern Arabic literature. In artistic sensitivity and in the standard of his stories he is a writer from whom Turkish storytellers could learn, yet, like many writers of the Eastern world, he has had the misfortune of remaining unknown in Turkey.