Vein

Original by Elif Sofya
Translated, from the Turkish, by Jeffrey Kahrs and Mete Özel

I found a language by scraping my skin
a bitter tree grew out of it
prepared, steamed, speeding
I crushed that language
I pulled it and dragged it and
Brought it to a halt
I stood by its water
I forgot a very long sentence
I freed myself from speaking
(You forgot the black sentence in me)
Let’s discover each other in our bones
We wrote our names on notebooks
And paved the state with our vastness
Water divided
A line’s drawn on the ground
This vein is now too fine for our minds

Damar

Derimi kazıyarak bir dil buldum
İçinden bu acı ağaç uzadı
Buharlandım, hazırlandım, hızlandım
O dili ezerek
çekip sürükleyerek durdurdum
Durdum suların arkasında
Upuzun bir cümle unuttum
Konuşmaktan kurtuldum
Sen de unut bendeki siyah cümleyi
Kemiklerimizden tanıyalım birbirimizi
Adımızı defterlere yazdırdık
Ve devletler döşedik uçsuz bucaksızlığımıza
Su bölündü
Yer çizildi
Artık dar bu damar aklımıza

Elif Sofya won the Attila İlhan Poetry Award in 2020 with her book Hayhuy (Uproar). Her poems and essays have been published in various literary magazines and fanzines. Her other books are Ters Düşünce (Reverse Thinking) 2005, Düzensiz (Irregular) 2010, In meinem Mund ein Boomerang (Her Collected Poems translated into German) 2013, Dik Âlâ (Irrelevant) 2014 and Pençe (Claw) 2021. In addition to her work as a poet and essayist, she has prepared and presented radio programs about culture, art, and politics.

Jeffrey Kahrs is the author of One Hook at a Time: A History of the Deep Sea Fishermen’s Union of the Pacific (2015) and a chapbook from Gold Wake Press (2010). A winner of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize (2012), he co-edited an issue of the Atlanta Review on poetry in Turkey and a section of the Turkish translation magazine Çevirmenin Notu. His poetry, fiction, essays and book reviews have been published in numerous journals, and he’s been translated into four languages. His translations have been published in Asymptote and Circumference. He lived in Istanbul for 18 years.

Mete Özel’s first book of poems, Ilgım Düş Esrar (Mirage), was published in 2008 by Yasakmeyve. Since 2014 he has been working on aspects of Anatolian oral traditions as a researcher and storyteller, and his writing has appeared in numerous well-known Turkish journals, such as Varlık, Yasakmeyve, and Virüs. He’s an accomplished critic, having published essays about Elitis, Pavese, Cavalcanti, and Goethe. Metin Altıok, Carlos Felipe Moisés, Artem Harutyunyan, Rutger Kopland, Michele Zaffarano, Miron Bialoszevski, Yip Fai, Yelena Şvarts, Donnie Smith, and Elena Liliana Popescu are a few of the poets he has translated. He is a founding partner of an international translation company called Mirora. He lives in Istanbul.

Translator’s Note:
Elif Sofya’s writing contains shamanic reflections on nature and the world. She pushes the Turkish language to its expressive limits, what’s often referred to as “breaking the language”. This is to create a revolutionary poetic existence that at one and the same time celebrates the natural world while criticizing the masculine structure that specifically exists, linguistically and culturally, in Turkey. Sofya is a true original within the poetic traditions of her country. She’s one of the rare poets working on environmental issues. Her concerns with nature as a powerful force very much alive and sustainable, expresses her ecological concerns.