Âşık Fatma, whose real name is Fatma Üzüm and who uses her own name as her pen name in her poems, is a woman folk poet (âşık, minstrel) born in Amasya. She is a minstrel who composes and performs with the saz works in the bozlak, barak and lament (ağıt) genres, released a cassette in 1993 and has performed her works on local radio and television programmes. What is known about her comes from a 2010 article based on an interview Ayşe Aslan conducted with her in 2009 and from two studies on women minstrels; her entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature) draws on these works. Her date of birth has not been published, and since the published sources contain no record of her death, only publicly available literary information is given on this page.

Her Life

Fatma Üzüm was born in Amasya. The studies about her do not give her year of birth; the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü counts her among the minstrels of the twentieth century. According to the sources her father was also a minstrel, but she lost him at a very young age and never knew him. Her interest in poetry and the minstrel tradition began in childhood. By her own account, after having a dream she set about writing her poems with much greater enthusiasm. After her marriage she was obliged to stop writing poetry for a time. In the study by Fatma Ahsen Turan and Reyhan Gökben Saluk on women minstrels, her story is cited as an example of the difficulties that being a woman brings within the minstrel tradition. Âşık Fatma did not give up poetry despite these difficulties and later began writing and playing the saz again.

Âşık Fatma's link with Amasya is her birthplace. The sources do not specify in which district or village of Amasya she was born, nor how long she lived in the city. Whether she took Amasya as a subject in her poems is not known; while this page was being prepared, no published poem of hers concerning Amasya could be found. The link with Amasya therefore rests on a single piece of information: the record of her birthplace given by the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü on the authority of Aslan and the 2014 book.

Her Minstrelsy and Poetry

Copyright note: Since Fatma Üzüm's poems are under copyright protection, they cannot be published on separate pages. As the published sources contain no record of her death, it is not known when the term of protection will expire; under Turkish law, works are protected for seventy years after the poet's death.

Âşık Fatma's master was İhsan Işık. Among the minstrels she admires and takes as models she names Karacaoğlan, Dadaloğlu, Âşık Veysel, Muhlis Akarsu, Âşık Mahsunî Şerif, Ali Tarapoğlu and Neşet Ertaş. Of these, she says Neşet Ertaş holds a special place in her heart and that she takes him as her model when writing her works. The works she composes and performs are mostly examples of the bozlak, the barak and the lament.

In her poems she uses syllabic metres of seven, eight and eleven syllables. Her subjects are love, separation, the hardships of life, longing, the human struggle to make a living and to survive, the transience of the world and death. She composes her poems extemporaneously (irticalen), that is, improvising on the spot; where necessary she revises them afterwards and then writes them down.

Some of her poems have appeared in the magazines of minstrels' and writers' associations. In 1993 she released a cassette titled "Yitirdim Yavrumu Kader Utansın" (I Lost My Child, Let Fate Be Ashamed). She has performed her works on various television channels, Ostim TV and TRT 1 among them, and on local radio stations. The sources do not say whether she has a book collecting her poems. While this page was being prepared, no published text of her poems could be found; for this reason no quotation is given here.

State of the Sources

The first study of Âşık Fatma is the interview conducted with her in 2009 by Ayşe Aslan, then a student at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Gazi University, and the article based on it that Aslan published in the fourth volume of the series Yaşayan Halk Şairleri Sazın ve Sözün Sultanları. The 2014 book Geçmişten Günümüze Sazda ve Sözde Usta Kadınlar by Turan, Saluk and Ünal Ünalan and the English-language article published by Turan and Saluk in 2015 also mention her. The entry in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü was written by Fatma Ahsen Turan in 2019 and is based on these three works. The information on this page is taken from that entry; Aslan's article, the 2014 book and the 2015 article could not be consulted for this research. It should also be noted that the information rests largely on the poet's own account and could not be checked against any other document.

Chronology

1993: Releases her cassette "Yitirdim Yavrumu Kader Utansın".

2009: Ayşe Aslan interviews her.

2010: Aslan's article is published in volume IV of Yaşayan Halk Şairleri Sazın ve Sözün Sultanları.

2019: Her entry is published in the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Ayşe Aslan, "Fatma Üzüm (Âşık Fatma)", Yaşayan Halk Şairleri Sazın ve Sözün Sultanları, vol. IV, ed. Fatma Ahsen Turan, Başak Uysal, Ankara: Gazi Kitabevi, 2010, pp. 141-147 (as cited in Turan 2019).
  • Fatma Ahsen Turan, Reyhan Gökben Saluk, Özlem Ünal Ünalan, Geçmişten Günümüze Sazda ve Sözde Usta Kadınlar, ed. Nezahat Özcan, Ankara: Gazi Kitabevi, 2014, p. 207 (as cited in Turan 2019).

Academic studies

  • Fatma Ahsen Turan, Reyhan Gökben Saluk, "Female Minstrels within the Minstrelsy Tradition and the Problems They Encounter", International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 5(7/1), 2015, pp. 118-126 (as cited in Turan 2019).

Books

Online sources