Elif Sezen



Jennifer Mackenzie Reviews Elif Sezen’s A little book of unspoken history

In these times many of us from all corners of the globe have more than one place we call home. Concepts of nationality, attachment to place, a sudden annunciation of enlightened belonging or steadfast refusal of it can be dissociative, painful and conversely full of artistic promise.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Review Short: Elif Sezen’s Universal Mother

There is something delicious about a collection that doesn’t open itself up to the reader on a first or even second reading and yet compels them to come back to it, something delightful about lines that lodge themselves in your brain and demand a third, fourth, fifth reading to reunite them with the poems they come from.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged ,

Siobhan Hodge Reviews Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry

Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry presents a compelling cross-section of feminist voices, experiences and engagements in Australia, picking up from where Kate Jenning’s 1975 feminist anthology Mother, I’m Rooted: An Anthology of Australian Women Poets left off.

Posted in BOOK REVIEWS | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Elif Sezen’s ‘Dear Immigrants’ and ‘The Turkish Bath’

I am reminded of Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth. For the work Salcedo broke a hairline crack into the floor of the Tate Gallery’s Turbine Hall. Running the sheer length of the hall, the crack broadened out to a crevasse of some feet. You walked alongside and gaped in. The floor was later repaired the cracks remain.

Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged ,

The Turkish Bath | Hamam

Foamed, steamed, speechless ghosts — I, my grandmother and a few others — How nice, angels are more visible here. I feel more feminine, and all women start looking alike Is this a way to pay one’s account? To whom? …

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Dear Immigrants | Sevgili Göçmenler

From the purses of immigrants roll out candies like not-blessed eye balls, right in front of our feet. And just about to say Well Come, we rather remain silent as if ripping off the tree roots from its soil or …

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Our Night Afternoon

for Ebru You say ‘every noun is a gift as long as it trails its hollows’ So we swallow the day’s nouns: Melbourne Istanbul Salonico Ayvalık Bazaar Cat-eye Soap Pajamas We become the evening one by one we become the …

Posted in 78: CONFESSION | Tagged

Spoon Bending: A Chapbook Curated by Kent MacCarter

There is no such thing as a good poem about nothing? What does that mean, exactly? And what’s all this about spoon bending anyways?

Posted in CHAPBOOKS | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Their Bodies | Onların Bedeni

Their Bodies are carved on ice – contemplation as water, once flowing towards another Antarctic as a ruin of holy residuals failing to become soulless and have failed to be consumed by inebriated modernizations. They were once Lemurians hypothetical root-race …

Posted in SPOONBENDING | Tagged