Ilhan Berk

Born 1916, in Manisa. Turkish poet.

Berk graduated from the French department of the Ghazi Ankara Pedagogical Institute in 1945. He was a teacher from 1945 to 1955. He became a member of the Triangle literary group, which spoke out against the chasm between life and poetry. His verses appeared in the collections Greetings From Those Who Light the Sun (1935), Istanbul (1947), Hello, Earth (1952), Song of Turkey (1953), Kö roglu (1955), and others. Berk long imitated the American poet W. Whitman. His book The Sea of Galilee (1958) was a turning point in his creativity. He broke with the Triangle group’s traditions and headed the Second New, a decadent group of poets that was under the influence of the French modernist-lettrists. He published several collections— Cuneiform (1960), The Tent (1961), and Misizkalyonig̊ne (1962)—under the rubric Senseless Verses. He compiled an anthology of Turkish poetry and translated the verses of French poets into Turkish.