Bejan Matur

Bejan Matur (born 14 September 1968, Kahramanmaraş) is a Kurdish poet and writer from Turkey.

Background

Matur was born to an Alevi Kurdish family on 14 September 1968 in the city of Kahramanmaraş in Turkey's Mediterranean Region. Her first school education was in her village; later she attended the long-established Lycée in the region's most important cultural center Gaziantep. These years were spent living with her sisters far from their parents. She studied Law at Ankara University, but has never practiced. In her university years, she was published in several literary periodicals. Reviewers found her poetry "dark and mystic". The shamanist poetry with its pagan perceptions, belonging to the past rather than the present, of her birthplace and the nature and life of her village, attracted much attention.

Works

Her first book, Rüzgar Dolu Konaklar (Winds Howl Through the Mansions), published in 1996, unrelated to the contemporary mainstream of Turkish poets and poetry, won several literary prizes. Her second book, Tanrı Görmesin Harflerimi (God Must Not See The Letter of My Script) in 1999 was warmly greeted. Two further books, appeared at the same time in 2002, Ayın Büyüttüğü Oğullar (The Sons Reared by the Moon) and Onun Çölünde (In His Desert), have been continuing the distinctive language and world of imagery special to herself and her poetry.

Her poem has been translated up to 17 languages. She has a translated book, which published by ARC in England, called in the Temple of a Patient God.

Her translated book in German and French published in Luxembourg by PHİ Publishing House. Her last book, İbrahim’in Beni Terketmesi (Leaving of Abraham), published in March 2008, was considered by the critics to be her best book ever. In that book, her new way of imagery was considered as mystique. She created a personal ontology and a personal mythology inspired by the thousands year of Sufi Tradition.

May 2009, she has published an album-book called Doğunun Kapısı: Diyarbakır (The Gate of East: Diyarbakir). The book is about the city called Diyarbakir, which is ancestral homeland of Kurdish and Armenian people. She has written a history of the city, which is nearly 3000 years old. Through her poetic text and the photos you can see the history of the city form ancient time to present. The book is considered by the critics, as one of the best book ever written about an Anatolian city.

In 2010, she published Kader Denizi (Sea of Fate) with the photographs taken by Mehmet Günyeli after the exhibition of Sea of Fate in the prestigious galleries in Istanbul and Ankara.

In 2010, she contributed to Son Defa with a monologue about love, played by Tiyatro Oyunevi and to Özgürlük (Freedom) with a poem called Dağ (Mountain), published with the cooperation of Amnesty International.

In February 2011 she published her recent book called Dağın Ardına Bakmak (Looking Behind the Mountain) which is her first prose book. It is about the former and current PKK Guerillas. For the book, she went to the steep Kandil Mountain, where PKK is located and hided, for making interviews with the guerrillas, fight against the Turkish Army. The book is the first attempt to show off the personal stories and traumas of the guerillas behind the frontiers in the war.

Journalism and other contributions

Between 2003 and 2013, she wrote regular articles and Op-Eds of daily newspapers in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan including Zaman (2003-2011), Rudaw Media Network, and daily Milliyet. She sometimes appeared in the English circulated newspaper Today's Zaman. Mainly, she writes about Kurdish politics, Armenian issue, daily politics, minority problems, prison literature, and women's issues. She founded DKSV (Diyarbakır Cultural Art Foundation) which is a cultural foundation located in Diyarbakır. She worked and conducted social projects with children, women and the younger population who were removed from their villages from 2007 to 2010.

She also made a TV programme, İnsan Atlası, which was about culture, art and politics.

She is among the council of experts of the Democratic Progress Institute (DPI), a London-based think-tank for conflict resolution, which focuses on the Kurdish question in the Middle East.

Personal life

Bejan Matur, who believes that there is no frontier between poetry and life, and she travels the world like a long-term desert nomad. She lives between Berlin and Istanbul since 2023.

Books and other works

1. Rüzgâr Dolu Konaklar (Winds Howl Through the Mansions),1996, poetry
2. Onun Çölünde (In His Desert), 2002, poetry
3. Ayın Büyüttüğü Oğullar (Sons Reared by the Moon), 2002, poetry
4. İbrahim’in Beni Terk Etmesi (How Abraham Abandoned Me), 2008, poetry
5. In the Temple of a Patient God, 2003, Poetry, A Collection of her translated works (UK)
6. Winddurchwehte Herrenhauser, 2006, Selected poems translated to Germand and French (Luxembourg)
7. Doğunun Kapısı: Diyarbakır (The Gate of East: Diyarbakir), 2009, poetry
8. Kader Denizi (Sea of Fate), 2010, poetry
9. Dağın Ardına Bakmak (Looking Behind the Mountain), 2011, non-fiction prose
10. 四處是風的別墅 (Wind howl through the mansions), 2011, (Selected poems translated to Chinese) (Hong Kong)
11. How Abraham Abandoned Me, 2012, English translation of İbrahim'in Beni Terketmesi (UK)
12. Al Seu Desert, 2012, a poetry selection translated to Catalan (Barcelona)
13. Son Dağ (The Last Mountain), 2014, poetry
14. Guardare dietro la montagna, 2015, Italian translation of Dağın Ardına Bakmak (Italy)
15. Aşk/Olmayan, 2016, poetry
16. If this is a lament, 2016, poetry
17. Det sista Berget, 2016, selected poems translated to Swedish, (Sweden)
18. Çiyaye Dawin, 2017, selected poems translated to Kurdish, (Sweden)
19. Ceremoniele Gewaden Gedichten, 2017, selected poems transled to Flemish, (Belgium)
20. Akin to Stone, 2020, selected poems, (UK)
21. Dünya Güzeldir Hala (The World is still beautiful), 2021, poetry

Albums

1. Yedi Gece (Seven Nights) LP by Kalan Music, 2021, an album of poetry-music arranged by Serkan Duran, Istanbul

External links

• Transcript-review.org , Bejan Matur's Poems (in English)
• Şiir.gen.tr, Bejan Matur's Poems (in Turkish)
• As a columnist her articles in Zaman Newspaper (in Turkish)
• Today's Zaman (in English)
• Matur's Books