İlhan Sami Çomak is a prolific award-winning Kurdish poet with nine collections to his name, all of them published during his three decades as one of Turkey’s longest-serving political prisoners.
Çomak was arrested in 1994 whilst still a student and charged with membership of the banned PKK. After 19 days of torture, he signed a confession and was sentenced to death for the crime of ‘separatism’. This was later commuted to life. The ECHR ruled that his conviction was unlawful and Çomak has twice appealed, sadly to no avail. He was denied conditional release in 2023 and is now due to be freed on 21 August 2024. PEN International had long been campaigning for Çomak’s early release alongside promoting his extraordinary work at various festivals and events.
Separated From The Sun
Separated From The Sun is a slim volume of 50 selected poems by Çomak edited by Caroline Stockford and published in late 2022 by the radical imprint Smokestack Books founded by North East poet Andy Croft. Despite his life of extraordinary privation Çomak’s work is a bitter-sweet affirmation of the human spirit. He draws extensively on childhood memories and the natural world, documenting the simple pleasures that are denied him and travelling in his imagination to places both known and unknown.
It’s for this reason
It’s for this reason I slashed my face.
By placing the resonance of a letter
in the space between us and the sun.
Laugh! I said to the tired face of rebellion.
I’m reconciled with this matter, now.
You know, like drawing a sketch and then staring, asking, is it an apple, pear or apricot?
Saying, it’s a plum! in that tone that’s almost warm: the tone of a pause.
Blood’s brotherhood was so far away and stoppered. Blood that pours from all wounds and flows to me. My skull splits from storing up night’s every sound. Hear me well, hear me now!
I, who am the love of all the flowers –
I’ll cross the Nile, I’ll cross the Arab sands,
If the Tigris and Euphrates detain me –
It’s blood, you know, even taste has a name –Write my name like an eye; as a watchman.
Because the going is poetry, prose is the road. And I would be a brother to my father,
carrying pain on my body like an amulet.
By İlhan Sami Çomak
Translated by Caroline Stockford
Life does not lie
for Michael Baron
I am between the moon and the tide
between the whisper and the scream.
When I was a child, had still the script of a child,
when I was hostage to my mother’s pomegranate smile,
when I looked from the window to the full light of the garden watching the practical philosophy of hands plucking the fruit tree. In those times when we still heard the sound of frogs
when women passed through my life, and the lake was blue when I knew the value of blue. I understand
there is pain, too, on the steps of life.
On the day of existence the wind rose up to meet me
resistance, like dew on the grass met my feet
Ripe fires grew across my body, and doves –
my feelings were met by the rustle of their wings.
In spring’s demeanour I hear the sounds of cleaning
I hear footsteps of plains and mountains and the law
of snow melting. Earth grows damp in my memory,
fruit ripens, stones’ habitual weight grows light,
makes it to flow and tremble as it wishes.
In my place between trouble and wellbeing
I hear the song of happiness from the world.
As goodwill blossoms: Life does not lie! I say
it does not lie!
By İlhan Sami Çomak
Translated by Caroline Stockford
Images of songbirds fly between the pages, soaring skywards, traversing unseen mountain ranges, across landscapes sketched from memory. Çomak’s love affair with the world beyond his prison bars is understandable but this is not a maudlin self-pitying introspective collection. Rather it is a conversation with the reader. Some poems are direct responses to various writers/campaigners/intellectuals whilst others are dedicated to key people in Çomak’s life, including the veteran human rights campaigner Margaret Owen for whom he conjures up a vision of urban wildlife, and the ubiquitous migrating birds that seem to carry his dreams.
“No cage can contain the colours of my heart and breath…”
Indeed, the day cannot come soon enough when this extraordinary human being can taste freedom at last.
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