MES ARTS 11

Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI

In the Spring of 2002, my dear friend, Sara Russell, Editor of Poetry Life and Times (UK) contacted me via e-mail, asking me whether I would volunteer to translate several poems by an internationally well established and highly creative Turkish poet, Üzeyir Lokman Çayci, who currently resides in France. I gladly obliged, and even offered to translate into English for the August, 2002 Editorial in Poetry Life and Times an interview I held with Üzeyir in French.

While Üzeyir Lokman Çayci is a very popular poet in Europe, he is not well-known in North America. Since so much of his poetry has been translated into equally fine French verse, and is now being gradually translated into English as well, I thought best to formally introduce one of the world's most illustrious poets to the North American literary scene. I should also note, in passing, that Üzeyir Lokman Çayci has his official Turkish-French translator, Yakup Yurt, who has consistently penned some very moving French renditions of Üzeyir's original Turkish verse. Since I myself, as one of three or four English translators (the others being F.J. Bergmann and Joneve McMcCormick) , do not understand Turkish at all, I must rely completely on the faithfulness of Yakup Yurt's French translations. That his translations are both accurate and just we may, however, rest assured. It is also notable that all of his English translators have exercised the same measure of care and sensibility in their translations of Üzeyir Lokman Çayci's splendid poems. This can be readily attested by the fact that there exists a remarkable consistency in wording and in tone of the English translations effected by the translators mentioned here. -
Richard VALLANCE