Kara Seitliev

Born Jan. 1, 1915, in the village of Karagan, now in Bakharden Raion; died May 2, 1971, in Ashkhabad. Soviet Turkmen poet and state figure. People’s Writer of the Turkmen SSR (1967). Member of the CPSU from 1950.

Seitliev studied in the department of philology at the Baku Pedagogical Institute from 1937 to 1941. In 1963 he became minister of culture of the Turkmen SSR.

Seitliev began publishing in 1938. His first verse collection was A Poet’s Lyre (1941). During the Great Patriotic War (1941—45), he published the collections of military and patriotic verse The Inspiration of Battle (1942) and The Sistrum (1944). His postwar poetry retained its publicist and civic tone, as seen in the collections The Source (1950), Under a High Sun (1955), and Flowers of India (1960), but he also wrote many lyric poems about love and nature. Many of Seitliev’s poems have been set to music. He also wrote a number of plays.

In 1966, Seitliev was awarded the Makhtumkuli State Prize of the Turkmen SSR for his text to the oratorio Lenin (1964; music by D. Ovezov). He was chairman of the administrative board of the Writers’ Union of the Turkmen SSR from 1955 to 1959. A deputy to the second through seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR, Seitliev was awarded three orders and several medals.