ERKUT TOKMAN
See the first part of the article.
İlhan Sami Çomak could not personally follow the poetry environment outside. He always followed and wrote poetry with limited means, as much as he could access from the prison, as much as he was told, as much as he could receive. any knowledge. Had he been outside of this limitation, he would have opened up to a wider universe of possibilities. I know it caused him feel regret. He mentions about it in his book. Without doubt he would not have the intellectual pressures caused by the prison environment on his mind. While reading his poems, I felt that sometimes this was perceived as self-censorship in his poems, and that some barriers were involuntarily built from the bottom, but he always tried to keep his poetry out of these pressures and to bring it to life. Taking creativity and imagination as a guide for himself, he opened up new areas of freedom with his intelligence and determination to work. But of course, not only those who write inside, but also those who write outside of prison have felt this feeling ourselves at certain times. İlhan Sami Çomak says that he especially cares about other poets’ critical views on his poetry, and he sees this as a deficiency in himself. If İlhan Sami Çomak was outside, I am sure that he would see from his own experience that this is not a matter of great regret. Today, in our country, where poetry criticism is not based on a scientific and academic ground; unfortunately, the articles written by poets on the poems and books of other poets cannot go beyond an evaluation, interpretation and show of appreciation. The critics is hardly ever made. When it is made, it consist of a few sentences that are made up that are baseless and that do not have a conceptual basis. In this and other respects, the regrets and shortcomings that İlhan felt about poetry due to not being outside, I am sure, would decrease after getting to know the poetry environment outside, and maybe it would never happen.
We need to look at this issue from the opposite direction. In this context, the bond that İlhan established with his poetry and the place where this bond takes him is an example to many poets who are outside of prison and write poetry or think that they are writing poetry. Some quarters, whose works can not be named as poetry anymore, have features that a poet should not have, these features were supported and glorified by various interest groups, even rewarded and put on the literary market. You can only instill these features in the individuals in societies where educational and cultural basis is not developed and whose thoughts are not based on a logical and philosophical basis. This is what happening in Turkey. İlhan Sami Çomak offers us perhaps one of the purest, the most innocent, most humane poems within four walls, free from all this dirtiness. All poets should learn from this. Look what the poet says about it: “Poetry cannot replace real life! I see attitudes that idealize what I am experiencing with naivete, such as – especially considering that I am inside- I was so called prioritizing poetry over life, and substituting poetry for life. However, no matter how idealized it is, life is not very interested in poetry and our thoughts. Life is busy making its own judgment” (p.96). These words are so important! It should be read again and again by every poet in the poets’ community who is busy at digging each other’s pit at the dog-eat-dog world. (I’m not saying this as a generalization.) He identified these realities without being in this community. An insincere poem in this understanding, which detaches poetry from the reality of life, society and the world, is accepted only among writer poets today and has become unreadable apart from it. That’s why I don’t agree with the words that İlhan Sami Çomak mentions in his book. “Therefore, I did not have a ‘normal’ poem because I did not live under normal conditions!” We can also prove this with examples from the poets’ understanding of poetry that are outside of prison. For example, Gülseli İnal’s poem or Ece Ayhan’s poem, no matter how unusual -abnormal- it may seem, is original, important and has a place. We can recall other names as examples as well. That is all to say, in this context, İlhan’s poetry may be, seem more “normal” than some poets that are outside, in his words. I am grateful to İlhan for including “Being a Poet in Prison” to this book, so that everyone has the opportunity to take a step into his poetry and clues about his poetry. What I am saying is that the poet remained so pure and clean inside that the outside life could not pollute him; as it pollute us. Therefore, perhaps he is right in his words: “My poetry is alone!”
İlhan Sami Çomak, from another point of view, is a real life lesson left alone in the midst of insincerity, intolerance, populist intellectual insensitivity, internal conflicts and fights in our society. I witnessed this personally by living, but of course, there were those who helped him sincerely, without expecting any benefit, humanely. At this point, Enver Ercan’s Komşu Publishing House which had an important place in Turkish literature at that time but does not continue after Ercan’s death today, provided him the opportunity to meet with literary community for the first time in a serious way, by publishing the poetry books of İlhan Sami Çomak in the Yasakmeyve series. In fact, while he was in prison, Komşu Publishing House organized an autograph session where poets came together and signed his books. But the poet was forgotten for a long time after that. Individually, only some sensitive writers and poets have written and interviewed on his books. In this context, a mass appropriation, a mass attitude against this injustice, unfortunately, has not been made by our author organizations. In particular, although he is a member of the PEN Turkey, he has been ignored. No organizational effort was made either for his freedom or for the promotion of his poetry. Until İlhan’s receiving the Sennur Sezer Poetry Award after being promoted abroad under the leadership of PEN Norway with personal efforts, and his voice being heard, brought him to the agenda in Turkey to some extent. After that, writer organizations started to take more interest in him. It is possible to connect this to the populist intellectual identity in Turkey and the leader herd relations and internal conflicts and alignments in the organizations. As someone who has gone through and experienced these processes personally, I say this without prejudice, based on my experiences. We come from a society where concepts are said as clichés too often, and are trivialized; a culture of deception is forced to get memorized by the society, but never actually experienced. It is not possible to find a sincere understanding that embraces everything when it comes to the end of rope, when bad or good results occur, not in all of their processes. It would not be right to limit this to İlhan Sami Çomak only. We see this in every social wound in Turkey. On the Kurdish issue, on the women’s issue, on the democracy issue. In the contamination in literature…
THIS IS THE BOOK OF KEKE AND SAMI..
İlhan is a person who has always held on to life with miracles. He is someone who is aware of the role played by coincidence in life and has given meaning to it. In this sense, life has always tested him with death. “I have always lived in unusual circumstances. In unusual conditions and places. I was put to the test against my will” he says. This life, which was tested with death, from his going back from death’s door in a car accident, to the death of his brother, to his escape death under torture, raised awareness against pain in his memory. We can call this the consciousness and enlightenment of pain. The poem made him invulnerable to evil. He is now testing us, all of us, with life itself, based on these miracles he clings to. He tests us with humanity, love, peace, freedom and justice. In my opinion, it is up to us to be a part of this miracle, to give it a little helping hand, to understand and support it. We can do this by making his voice heard more! Look what İlhan Sami Çomak says: “I’m still looking for the peace that permeates those winter nights where fairy tales are told and the misty happiness of my childhood, and I don’t understand where it scattered and disappeared later on…. All I have left is poetry and imagination. I miss and love that boy so much, who believes in fairy tales and beautiful endings in fairy tales. That’s why I write poems!”
I think this book is also the book of “Keke” and “Sami”, which hurt us with the story of that plastic shoe in the book, but in which a warm brotherhood embraced it. Think how meaningless and incomplete this book would be without the chapters in which “Keke” was told! Brotherly love is immortalized in him. Although he could not accept his death, İlhan Sami Çomak made this by using the power of writing and poetry with the desire to make this love divine, godlike and immortal, and left his pain to nature. “I miss Keke very much,” says the poet; We also miss the “Great Humanity” which Nazım spoke about but will never be true, but exists inside the beautiful people like you, while we are imprisoned in many things outside.
“Brother, push slowly”
I pushed, hurting the world (p.141)
I love you İlhan Sami Çomak; brother, Keke! But I cannot love you, humanity! Wherever you are! It is a climate of miracles that is recreated, transformed and revealed in this book: It is the desire to reach the secrets and miracles of human existence, in which humanity, brotherhood, love are cherished, freedom is hoped for.
Well, what does İlhan Sami Çomak want from you? He wants himself that you stole from him, back! The life and freedom you stole… Is he asking too much from you? He wants something universal, which is the right of every human being! Is he committing a crime or is it us doing it?
Remember that with a popular definition that you are very familiar with, this is “A Real Success Story”, but it will never happen to anyone else and we would like it not to happen.
İlhan Sami Çomak plays his childhood at length.
When you kiss the lips of time, the seasons turn over one by one.
But he always knows how to be patient like fire.
Now he is coming on his hourse.
In order to bring us rain.*
Erkut Tokman. 7-8.06.2021 – Osmanağa – Kadıköy
*Rain Lessons – Yasakmeyve Poetry Series – February 2017 – Cover letter.
