Introducing some great poetry from Turkey part 1: A Brief History

I had a long break since my last entry but will of course continue with my travel story later on. However today I felt like introducing my dear foreign readers to Turkish poetry.Yesterday, while reading the great Russian poet Sergey Yesenin unfortunately not in his own language but in English, my belief in powers of translation gained strength and I wondered how our ingenious poets would sound like in English. The results are really amazing, and even my countrymen can get a different  taste in them. I always thought that in terms of poetry Turkish literature can compete with the best of the best in the world and I hope my foreign friends will think the same after reading some of the poems I will introduce. I'm really thankful to Sibel Adalı, a Turkish academician living in New York, who has prepared a website with a really good amount of Turkish poems translated in English. All the translations are taken from her website and if you want to read more just go to her website: Turkish Poetry in Translation

In a strange land called Crna Gora I found my travelmate Dorota

Bar, Budva, Gin and Vodka!

So I met a Lithuanian guy and a Polish girl on a sunny and hot day of August. Dorota was definitely not the girl in the profile picture; in reality she looked very different; in a positive way of course. The other girl, the other Dorota seemed a little bit more innocent, which you can read as less colorful so I was pleasantly surprised to find a more cheerful and entertaining travelmate than expected. Of course the shiny and bright picture of Dorota will be clearer as we move on with the story, so let’s try to sketch Eduardas, the Lithuanian a little bit.

Five lazy days in Temerin and Novi Sad

We arrived to Novi Sad in the afternoon. For me the names of many ex-Yugoslavian cities are very familiar, mainly due to the tournaments mentioned in the chess books I have read in the toilet but also it is the second biggest city of Serbia, so it’s quite normal that I had a feeling about the city before I went there. People from Europe, like my travel mate Dorota, generally come to the city for the famous Exit Festival, a big festival of electronic music, however it was already over when we were there.Too bad since I like Portishead, well maybe next year.