Salih Aydemir's first book of poems was published by Öteki-siz Yayınları, the press he himself had founded in Istanbul, which also put out a review of the same name. Aydemir has kept up teaching, publishing and editing a review alongside his poetry. He was born in Amasya on 10 January 1967; since 2002 he has published seven books, six of them poetry. Whatever can be read about him is in a short entry İmran Çöllü wrote for the Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü (Dictionary of Names in Turkish Literature, TEİS), and nothing here goes beyond what that entry says.

His Life

He is the son of the teacher Sefer Aydemir. Although born in Amasya, he received his primary, secondary and high school education in Ulukışla, a district of Niğde. The entry does not explain when or why the family moved to Ulukışla; the father's profession suggests a teaching appointment, but that is only a possibility. He completed his higher education at the Muğla Faculty of Business Administration, then part of Dokuz Eylül University. From 1997 he worked as a teacher in Istanbul. In 2002 he founded Öteki-siz Yayınları and ran the review Öteki-siz and the books of the press. He is a member of the Association of Writers (Edebiyatçılar Derneği).

The only link between Aydemir and Amasya that appears in the source is his birthplace. His school years were spent in Ulukışla, his university years in Muğla and his later life in Istanbul. Whether he ever went back to Amasya later, or whether Amasya figures in his poems, the entry does not say. That TEİS lists other Amasya-born poets such as Berin Taşan among the entries related to him likewise derives from the same record of birthplace.

His Poetry

Copyright note: Aydemir is living and copyright covers his poems; for that reason none of them appears here on a separate page. Protection will continue for seventy years after the poet's death.

His name first appeared in print in 1991, with an interview published in Demokrat Dergisi. His poems and essays later appeared in the reviews Öteki-siz, Üç Nokta, Kuzey Yıldızı, Islık, Kül, Ağır Ol Bay Düzyazı and Sanatta Yaratım. He also tried his hand at fiction: his first story, "Gündelik Hayatın Gözleri Şaşıdır" (The Eyes of Everyday Life Are Cross-Eyed), was published in 1997 in the review Mozaik Şiir-Sanatı İnadı. Fayton, Sevi, Mum, İskenderiye Kütüphanesi and Budala, also named in the entry, are among the reviews in which his writing appeared.

Çöllü writes that the first thing to strike the reader in Aydemir's poetry is a search for wholeness. He notes that the poems of the first book, Meriç Hanım, can be read through the relationship between poetry and life, poetry and the past, poetry and the present. That is the whole of the assessment; the entry quotes no lines by the poet and passes no judgement on the later books.

There is no text to hand even for the short quotation copyright would permit. One detail is worth recording: the Tanzimat'tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi on which TEİS relies is dated 2001 and was printed before his first book. Aydemir's inclusion in this encyclopedia before any book of his had appeared suggests that he was becoming known in those years through his poems in reviews; as the encyclopedia entry itself is not to hand, this is only a guess.

Works

The text of the entry says that his poems were collected "in seven separate books"; the list of works, however, contains six books of poems together with H'içlenmeler, whose genre is given as "other". Whether the number includes this seventh book is not clear.

  • Meriç Hanım, poems, Istanbul: Öteki-siz, 2002.
  • Akıntılar, poems, Istanbul: Babil Yayıncılık, 2005.
  • Hüzünlü Isırgan, poems, Istanbul: Şiirden Yayınları, 2007.
  • Dilbendi, poems, Istanbul: Şiirden Yayınları, 2009.
  • Gölge Göçü, poems, Istanbul: Şiirden Yayınları, 2014.
  • H'içlenmeler, Istanbul: Lethe, 2015.
  • Sessizliğin Laneti, poems, Artshop Yayıncılık, 2017.

Chronology

1967: Born in Amasya on 10 January.

1991: An interview with him is published in Demokrat Dergisi.

1997: His first story appears in Mozaik Şiir-Sanatı İnadı; in the same year he begins teaching in Istanbul.

2002: Founds Öteki-siz Yayınları; his first book of poems, Meriç Hanım, is published.

2014: Gölge Göçü appears.

2017: Sessizliğin Laneti is published.

Bibliography

  • İmran Çöllü, "Salih Aydemir", Türk Edebiyatı İsimler Sözlüğü, 18.12.2018 (updated 12.11.2020). https://teis.yesevi.edu.tr/madde-detay/salih-aydemir
  • Tanzimat'tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar Ansiklopedisi, vol. I, Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2001, pp. 150-151 (as cited in TEİS).

Online sources