Şiir Dünyadan İbaret (Poetry Is Made of the World), recently published by Yapı Kredi Publishing, invites readers into a deep and multifaceted exploration of Nâzım Hikmet—one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Turkish literature. Edited by Olcay Akyıldız and Murat Gülsoy, this ambitious volume builds on the long-standing work of the Nâzım Hikmet Culture and Arts Research Center at Boğaziçi University and reflects the collective insights gained through symposiums, conferences, and public programs held over the past decade.
The project was originally inspired by the international symposium titled “I Want to Capture Time: Nâzım Hikmet from Past to Future” held in 2015, which brought together literary scholars and contemporary poets to reassess Hikmet’s place in both Turkish and world literature. That comparative, historically grounded, and critically reflexive spirit lives on in this publication, which approaches Nâzım not only as a poet but as a multidimensional artist whose work spanned poetry, theatre, film, prose, and visual arts.
The book is structured in three parts. The first section focuses on the poet’s later works, examining the lyrical and melancholic shift in his poetry during his final years. Veysel Öztürk’s essay traces this shift through the lens of Soviet theatre’s influence on Hikmet’s aesthetics, while Erkan Irmak analyzes the poem Saman Sarısı ("Straw Yellow") using Bakhtinian concepts like polyphony and chronotope, highlighting the intricate dialogue between biography and form.
The second part delves into Hikmet’s cross-genre creativity. Murat Gülsoy investigates Jokond ile Si-Ya-U, a highly experimental poetic text inspired by painting, interweaving it with Nâzım’s philosophical and visual sensibilities developed during his years in Moscow. Contributions by Fakiye Özsoysal and Esra Dicle focus on Hikmet’s avant-garde reworkings of classical plays, while Oğuz Makal reflects on the poet’s cinematic journey, framing his poems through the metaphor of a “camera-pen” that captures the world in motion.
The third and final section turns its attention to the legacy of Nâzım Hikmet in modern Turkish poetry. Drawing from a unique oral history project involving 49 contemporary poets, this section explores how Hikmet’s influence persisted—and evolved—after the lifting of the publication ban on his works in 1965. Essays by Kenan Behzat Sharpe and Yalçın Armağan interrogate how Nâzım has been mythologized, politicized, and reinterpreted across generations, often through the prism of aesthetic debates between socialist realism, the Second New, and later poetic movements.
The title of the book, Şiir Dünyadan İbaret (Poetry Is Made of the World), echoes a memorable line from Nâzım Hikmet’s epic Human Landscapes from My Country, in which a passenger questions whether poetry is really about everyday life. The answer—“Poetry is made of the world”—encapsulates the poet’s conviction that verse should reflect not only individual emotions but the broader social and historical conditions of human existence.
Through its rigorous scholarship, richly contextualized readings, and original research, Şiir Dünyadan İbaret stands as a landmark volume for anyone interested in reevaluating Nâzım Hikmet’s work in light of both his artistic innovations and his political legacy. For academics, researchers, and readers of poetry alike, this collection opens new pathways to understanding one of the twentieth century’s most visionary literary figures.
