Why unknown poets stay unknown?

01.10, Sunday, Avignon

It's cloudless. First day of the month, last day of the week. I feel like want to writing. No reason. No subject. My first poetry book was officially published yesterday, I think the launch will be next month. But I have a book. My first poetry book. What madness?

I am sharing with the world the autobiographical poems I have written in the form of a diary. Even though it is a limited edition (200 copies), it is now a small book with a few sheets of paper and a few pages. There are also beautiful, beautiful and a little melancholic flowers drawn by a very talented artist.

Why did I start writing? I don't know. Writing is more meaningful and special to me than speaking. I write without speaking at all, but am I not speaking? Am I talking nonsense? No, Şevval , you are not talking nonsense, your sleepy mind makes words into sentences and tries to make a room out of sentences. A room filled with yourself and suppressed by insomnia.

Wait, where were we? My first book of poetry. Okay, why did you start writing poetry? Last year I was unemployed, I was very bored and I was experiencing a lot of anxiety and depression. That's why I started writing poetry. It was right after the firing I mentioned in the last articles. At that moment a friend of mine came to me with the idea of a joint project and I started writing poems that day on my way back to Paris from Milan, with all my depression and anxiety.

Not every day, but on days when I felt very bad, I would write, sometimes from my own mouth, sometimes from the mouths of the characters I created, and writing about my pain, my feelings, my worst existential pains, became a kind of painkiller for me. I was relieved when I wrote, but when I was relieved, I didn't write. I wrote about the feelings in the bottomless pit of my heart in those dark moments, sometimes using words that hurt. This journal-like poetry notebook became a friend to me and my troubles, which were actually not very important but at that moment seemed like the end of the world to me.

And on January 1st I wrote my last poem, and I decided to call the book End of the Poems, because another year was over and I had managed to survive another year, I had clung to the words I wrote, to the poems that felt alien to me but were the closest to me. Then life flew by, I didn't look back at the poems much, I forgot about the pages I wrote in bed, sometimes with tears running down them. I got rid of that depression because I found a boring job where I clung to life. And I went back to living. I still don't know if it was just an existential crisis created by capitalism or an attack of depression, I'm not sure, I guess it doesn't matter.

Normally we were going to publish the book in January with my friend, but due to technical reasons and the artist's crisis of imagination, the drawings of the book were postponed and postponed, and while I was waiting with excitement and impatience for my first book to be published, I started to get along with life better, I found a better job that I liked better, my depression and anxiety that had taken over my soul became more controllable, except for the small attacks I had from time to time. And then September came and the drawings for the book were finished, and my artist friend went to Sardinia to make a book of my poems and drawings.

I received the book yesterday, the last day of September and I am sharing it today, the first day of October and the last day of the week. There are 3 months left in the year. The poems in the book cover November and December. I feel better. I'm excited to have my first book of poems, but at the same time I'm scared, because my first books of poems will be bought not by people who don't know me, but by people who know me. They will see the darkness inside me and maybe they will feel very bad that I feel this way. Maybe I am writing this article today to say "don't worry, I am fine, at least I am fine now".

Why unknown poets stayunknown? The title of my favorite poet's first book, i guess, i’m not sure. If I have written these poems, I would like to thank all the dead souls who have touched me, including Richard Brautigan. I will share this 24-page book, which is small step but big progress for me, with those closest to me and those I love. Part of me wishes that people who don't know me would read it and I would never be recognized, but I think I lost that right by not using a pseudonym. Nevertheless, I am very happy to share it with you.

I hope you will find something in my words written with childlike impatience, in my childhood trapped in my words, in my dream poems or poetic dreams that will touch your soul. Then I will be very happy as an unknown poet and I will see that my poetry can be universal as well as unique. Finally, I would like to end not with my own words but with my favorite poet’s words; "Words are flowers of nothing. I LOVE YOU"