Bearing Witness to the Age

About the Author

Behçet Necatigil (1979-1916) stands outside the main movements of modern Turkish Poetry as an original and innovative voice. His early poetry was often narrative and highly atmospheric, but over the year,s he purged his work of this element and wrote very concentrated, elliptical verse that utilized all the properties of the Turkish language. He was also an indefatigable translator of both German and Persian poetry and prose.

About the Translators

Neil P. Doherty, originally from Kildare, Ireland, resident in Istanbul since 1995, is a translator of Turkish prose and poetry. His translations have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Wales, The Antonym, Cyphers, The Dreaming Machine, The Honest Ulsterman, The Seattle Star and The Berlin Quarterly. He has also just finished translating an anthology of Turkish poets, which will be published under the title “Fog Bells. 8 Contemporary Turkish Poets” by Dedalus Poetry in October 2025.

Gökçenur Ç. was born in Istanbul in 1971 and spent his childhood in a number of cities across Anatolia. To date he has published seven books of his own poetry and many more of translations of world poetry. He served on the publishing board of the literary magazine Çevrimdışı İstanbul (Istanbul Offline) for many years. A selection of his poetry in English translation, under the title The Encyclopaedia of Forgotten Things, was published by Paperwall Publishing in India in 2021.

About the Illustrator

Sarbani Dasgupta, After she graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata, Sarbani Dasgupta designed shoes for a really big company for a really long dozen of years till she didn’t, turned around and picked up her paintbox where she left it. Now a full time artist, her work has been exhibited in Kolkata and Dhaka whereshe enjoys the company of her favorite humans, books and films.