The Voice of Water

There is a timelessness about Cevat Çapan’s poetry – it has an ancient and traditional quality while being firmly rooted in today’s world – and it is not confined by borders, being both thoroughly Turkish yet at the same time European, and beyond that, part of a greater world literature. What distinguishes this particular collection is the personal and intimate nature of many of the poems as Çapan looks back at times past, remembering friends and family, artists, events and places that have shaped his life: it is, as the poet says, a meditative journey through the Aegean and the Mediterranean. The natural world, and especially the sea with its restless, powerful, relentless movement, permeates
these poems, and their lucidity and simple beauty in Ruth Christie’s consummate translation continue to resonate long after the book is closed.

Cevat Çapan’s first book of selected poems from Arc, Where Are You, Susie
Petschek?, translated by Michael Hulse and the author, with an introduction by A .S.
Byatt, was published in 2001.

ISBN pbk 978-1910345-67-2
ISBN hbk 978-1910345-68-9
ISBN ebk 978-1910345-69-6
120 pages
Published July 2017

» About Cevat Çapan