Lale Müldür: Oriental Lyric Poetry

A brilliant, and the most influential, poet of contemporary Turkish poetry. Her work is so original that it is completely beyond any literary flow of Turkish literature. She was born in 1956 in Aydın, the Aegean region, studied at Middle East Technical University in Ankara and the universities of Manchester and Essex. She lived in Brussels for several years. She began to write poetry when she was 24, and has since published 11 poetry collections, e.g., Uzak Fırtına [Distant Storm], Kuzey Defterleri [North Notes], Divanü Lûgat-it-Türk [Collection of Turkish Dialects], or Siyah Sistanbul [Black Foggystanbul]. Her verses have a unique melody, and many of them have been turned into music. “In my poetry, the sound structure and the meaning are the same. I write totally spontaneously, it is automatic, I do not realize the meaning of the musical component until I first read it,” she says about her work. Her prosaic texts were collectively published in the book Anne Ben Barbar mıyım? [Mommy, Am I a Barbarian?].