Ayhan Bozkurt's first collection of poems, Ömür Ölümün Önsözü (Life Is the Preface to Death), published in his twenties, won the 1995 Rıfat Ilgaz Cide Literature Prize; his poems appeared in magazines such as Hişt, Öküz, Gösteri and Yeni Biçem. Born in Amasya on 6 June 1971, Bozkurt went on in later years to write stories, novels and memoirs, worked as a screenwriter, and became known as an actor in film and television. Little has been published about him, and the existing records disagree on several details; only publicly available literary records are used here.

Life

He completed his secondary education at Çorum Atatürk High School. He then entered the Department of Philosophy at Uludağ University in Bursa; the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature) says he graduated, while the biographical compilation Biyografya says he did not finish his studies. After settling in İstanbul he worked for two years as a model at Mimar Sinan University. During these years he sat on the editorial boards of the magazines Hişt and Öküz.

In 1997 his play Güldüşü Tangolar was staged at the Mimar Sinan University Auditorium. Screenwriting also belongs to this period; the script of the 2006 television series Sağır Oda is his. After 2010 he appeared more often in front of the camera: he had roles in the films Kaptan Feza (2010) and Merhaba Güzel Vatanım (2019) and in the series Şefkat Tepe, Karadayı, Paramparça, Bir Litre Gözyaşı and Hayaller ve Hayatlar. As he is a living author, no information about his private life is given on this page.

Connection with Amasya

What ties Bozkurt to Amasya is his birthplace: both the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü and Biyografya record him as born in Amasya, and the heading of the Biyografya entry adds the word "Amasyalı" (of Amasya) to distinguish him from others of the same name. That he went to high school in the neighbouring province of Çorum suggests the family moved there for a time, but the sources do not explain this. How far his poems return to Amasya or to the places of his childhood cannot be determined from the sources that could be consulted.

Poetry

Copyright note: Copyright covers Bozkurt's poems for as long as he lives and for seventy years after his death, so no separate page has been opened for any of them. There is no quotation in this section either: no verifiable text of a poem was found in the sources consulted.

The first book caused a modest stir. In 1996 Ahmet Ümit published a piece in Cumhuriyet Kitap titled "İlk kitabın büyüsü: Genç şair Ayhan Bozkurt Ömür Ölümün Önsözü ile okurunu arıyor" (The Spell of a First Book: Young Poet Ayhan Bozkurt Seeks His Readers with Ömür Ölümün Önsözü); two years later the same supplement carried a conversation about 28 Numaralı Oda (Room 28), again under Ümit's name. The texts of these pieces could not be obtained; their existence is known from the clipping record in the Hüseyin Cöntürk collection of Bilkent University Library and from the Biyografya bibliography. The same bibliography states that he is included in the fourth volume of Mehmet Çetin's Tanzimat'tan Bugüne Türk Şiiri Antolojisi.

He places fear at the centre of his poetry. In a 2000 interview with Deniz Durukan, published under the title "Dünyayı Güzellik Kurtarmayacak" (Beauty Will Not Save the World), he says: "There is no use in being good. They always say beauty will save the world. Beauty will not save the world at all. This is by no means a pessimistic thought." He goes on to say that fear, violence, pain and sorrow will always exist, as goodness does, and that because his own poetic journey is directed towards them, the end of fear would not make him happy. This attitude, which regards writing as paying a price, seems to match the title of his first book as well; a title that calls life the preface to death can be read as an early summary of what he said in the interview.

The titles and number of his books vary from source to source. The Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü lists four poetry books: Ömür Ölümün Önsözü (C Yayınları, 1995), 28 Numaralı Oda (Cem, 1998), Şehir Soyuldu (Cem, 1999) and Al Sana Aşk (Okka, 2002). Biyografya adds the titles Sel (1992), İkinci Yürek (1993), Mor Kitap (1997) and Aşk Bir Deniz Rüyası (1999), and gives the date of the first book as 1990.

Prose and Memoirs

In the 2000s the weight shifted to prose. His story collection Herkes Sevdiğini Öldürür came out in 2006. Three novels followed: Barikattaki Çocuk (2012) and Bütün Aşklar Birbirine Benzer, Biri Hariç (2013) from Everest Yayınları, and Aşk Diyorlar Buna (2015) from Alfa. The publisher's description presents the second novel as a book about present-day love affairs and relations between men and women, set against the dirty games played between power and the media.

The book that leaves most material for literary history is perhaps Söz Simyacıları (Alchemists of the Word, Everest, 2018). It consists of seven portraits, of Melih Cevdet Anday, Attilâ İlhan, Ece Ayhan, İlhan Berk, Can Yücel, Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca and Metin Altıok. He knew and met all of them except Altıok; the book turns the everyday details of these encounters, a meal eaten at Anday's home, days spent in hospital with Ece Ayhan, Dağlarca's Kadıköy, into a narrative somewhere between memoir and portrait. According to a compilation drawn from the book, Bozkurt ran into Dağlarca in the street shortly before his first book was printed, and when he introduced himself as "a poet", the old poet answered: "Even if I reached a hundred, I would not call myself a poet." Years later, when he visited him at his home in Kadıköy, Dağlarca advised him to take up cinema. The same compilation also tells how he stayed with Ece Ayhan as a companion while Ayhan was in hospital with an ailment of the feet.

State of the Sources

The two basic records on Bozkurt available today are the short Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü entry published in 2019 and the Biyografya compilation; the dictionary entry itself cites Biyografya as its source. The two records diverge on three points: whether he completed his university studies, the year of his first book (1995 or 1990), and the list of his poetry books. The award of the prize in 1995 and Ahmet Ümit's presentation of the book as a "first book" in 1996 make 1995 the stronger date; the books dated 1992 and 1993 listed by Biyografya could not be found in any other source. Because the curriculum vitae of another writer of the same name can appear on bookseller sites alongside this poet's books, biographical information from such pages has not been used here.

Chronology

1971: Born in Amasya on 6 June.

1995: Wins the Rıfat Ilgaz Cide Literature Prize with Ömür Ölümün Önsözü.

1996: Ahmet Ümit introduces his first book in Cumhuriyet Kitap.

1997: His play Güldüşü Tangolar is staged at the Mimar Sinan University Auditorium.

1998: 28 Numaralı Oda is published.

2006: His story collection Herkes Sevdiğini Öldürür comes out; he writes the script of the series Sağır Oda.

2012: His first novel, Barikattaki Çocuk, is published.

2018: Söz Simyacıları, a book of seven portraits of poets, is published.

Bibliography

Books

Other sources

  • Deniz Durukan, "Dünyayı Güzellik Kurtarmayacak" (interview), 1 June 2000 (as quoted by Biyografya).

Online sources