ESTABLISHING İLHAN BERK'S POETICS IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS ESSAYS

Abstract

İlhan Berk (1918-2008), whom Turgut Uyar says "he would have invented poetry if it didn't exist," lived like a poem, so to speak, and devoted every moment of his life to poetry. He wrote poetry from 1935, when his first poem was published, until his death, and continued to develop, modify, enlarge and try the untested. Therefore, İlhan Berk has not been able to draw his understanding and poetics of poetry in the full sense. The writings about him are also doomed to be incomplete, as they can only look at one phase of the poet's constantly moving poem.

İlhan Berk continued to think, speak and write about poetry while continuing to produce poetry in his life that is always intertwined with poetry. It is natural for İlhan Berk's literary identity that there are contradictory expressions and discourses in all this accumulation. As a matter of fact, this situation is also an indication of the dynamism of his poetry. In this study, İlhan Berk's poetic books were scanned and İlhan Berk's poetics was tried to be established. It will be tried to reveal what kind of poetics the poet has established through his own writings and sayings.