Sabahattin Ali

Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948) was born in Eğridere (now Ardino), in what is today Bulgaria, and trained as a teacher; he studied German in Potsdam and Berlin in the late 1920s and later taught in Anatolian schools. He is better known today as a novelist and short-story writer, the author of Kuyucaklı Yusuf and Kürk Mantolu Madonna (Madonna in a Fur Coat), but he also wrote verse throughout his life, much of it in the plain, song-like rhythms of Turkish folk poetry.

He was imprisoned in 1932 for a satirical quatrain, and again in the 1940s for his political views; the bitterness and longing of that experience colour poems such as Gurbet Hapishanesi ("The Prison of Exile"). He was killed near the Bulgarian border in April 1948 while trying to leave Turkey. Only seven poems, those transcribed on Turkish Wikisource, are given here; many of his best-loved poems are not included.