Istanbul poetry fest to host Dutch poetry

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The festival, which runs until Sept. 15, welcome leading Dutch poets.

This week’s International Istanbul Poetry Festival will have an orange hue as the Netherlands has been named the event’s special guest as part of ongoing celebrations marking 400 years of diplomatic relations between Turkey and the country.

The festival, which starts today and runs until Sept. 15, will welcome leading Dutch poets such as K. Michel, Ester Naomi Perquin and Menno Wigman, as well as Dutch literature critic, scholar Rob Schouten.

The festival will take place at the Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar Literature Museum, Cistern Basilica, Pera Museum, as well as the Istanbul Culture and Arts Association (İKSV). The event will also feature a number of free activities, including poetry events on the city’s many ferries. In all, 12 poets from abroad will attend the festival, including Bill Herbert from the United Kingdom, who is also an academic in Newcastle, as well as Romania’s Claudiu Komartin, who has received awards for her work, “The Puppeteer And Other Insomnia.”

In addition to the Dutch contingent, the event will further feature Catharina Gripenberg, Ester Naomi Perquin, Katerina Iliopoulou, Pedro Rodriguez Pacheco, Piera Mattei and Simone Inguanez from different countries. At the same time, the four-day festival will welcome Turkish poets such as Şükrü Erbaş, Turgay Fişekçi, Furkan Çalışkan, Haydar Ergülen, Mevlana İdris, Namık Kuyumcu, Cenk Gündoğdu, Süreyya Aylin Antmen, Tarık Günersel, Tozan Alkan, Tuğrul Keskin and Fatma Çolak.