![]() By reading his work and absorbing his passion for life and poetry, we lend substance to the power of his imagination and his belief in poetry, making them stronger than the oppressive regime that holds him in captivity. In the meantime, Ilhan wants the world to know his poetry, so that even though his body is imprisoned, his voice is free, unconfined. In a letter to the Guardian in 2020, several activists and poets, including George Szirtes, Anne Stevenson, Ruth Padel, Ifor ap Glyn, Choman Hardi and Gillian Clarke, called on the British prime minister and foreign secretary (then Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab) to make representations to the Turkish government to free Ilhan Sami Çomak as soon as possible. Pen America’s 2021 Freedom to Write Index showed Turkey ranking with China and Saudi Arabia at the top of a list of the world’s worst jailers of writers and public intellectuals. (…) Over these 28 years of unrelenting confinement, I missed life so much, I spoke of so many longings that in the end the longings took on a life of their own with poetry, above all with poetry, I woke up to life.” The continuity of this belief is all I have. In a letter written to Irish Pen, accepting their invitation to become their first Honorary Member, Çomak says: “I write poetry for the sake of life and to stay alive, for my deep connection with life, because I miss life, because it brings life to my cell, because I love life and people with a passion and because I believe in life and myself. The people who know his work and reach out to him in response are his ladder. That secret is the creative, imaginative power of poetry. ![]() But he knows a secret, he says, which wards off time and human cruelty. In a letter to supporters of the Free the Poet campaign, he refers to a line in an Anatolian folk song: ‘They left me in blind wells with no ladder.’ Being a prisoner for so long has increased a sense in his soul that he has been abandoned in that dark well without a ladder, and has laid siege to his concept of self, his senses and his mind. He is an accomplished correspondent, hence the wide, and increasing, circle of friends who believe in him and call for his release. Çomak asserts the sustaining power of friendship, which overcomes the apparently insurmountable barriers imposed by prison walls. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2007 that his conviction was unlawful. After several days of torture, he confessed, but since then he has consistently denied the charges against him. ![]() This happened when the Turkish state was in conflict with the PKK, resulting in thousands of convictions and harsh sentences. Çomak was a geography student when he was arrested and accused of setting a forest fire in the name of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party, the PKK. Later that month, his first play was staged, although he has never seen a play performed. His first collection in English, Separated from the Sun, edited and with an Introduction by Welsh poet and translator Caroline Stockford, was published in September by Smokestack Books. (A Mackenzie Friend is a court-appointed guardian who represents the prisoner in all third-party interactions, effectively assuming the role of family.)ĭuring his confinement, Çomak has written eight award-winning collections of poetry. ![]() He has a pet bird and regular visits from his Mackenzie Friend, Ipek Özel, for company. This man has spent more than half his life in prison, the last eight years in solitary confinement. Sit back and think about that for a minute. The prize-winning Kurdish poet Ilhan Sami Çomak has been in prison in Turkey for 28 years, since he was 22 years old.
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