Mehmet Yashin, Poet and Author.

Mehmet Yashin (Yaşın) is one of the best-known contemporary poets and authors from Cyprus. The different voice and sensibility that he brings to Turkish poetry is based on his hybrid literary sources, combining the Turkish, Greek and Levantine cultures of the Mediterranean. His books have played an important role in re-defining the literary traditions of Cyprus and Turkey. His first poetry collection, which won the Turkish Academy Prize, was banned by the Turkish military junta and he was deported from Turkey in 1986. He has published Toplu Yazılar: 1978-2005, (Collected Essays: 1978-2005) and edited the volume, Step-Mothertongue: From Nationalism to Multiculturalism Literatures of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey (2000). He created a space for Turkish-writing Armenian and Jewish poets of Turkey, as well as Macedonian, Kosovar and Bulgarian poets and suggested the term “Turkophone Literature.” His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and his books have been published in various countries. Mehmet Yashin is currently writing two books dealing with Mediterranean cultures. The first is to be published in French,  La recontre de Sapho et Rumi  (La Refuge, Center International de Poesie – Marseille, 2012). The second book is a novel, Kehribar (Amber), and combines forms of memoir, travel writing, notes on a photo album and narrative poems. The novel is set in the Levant between 1906-1966 and 2007.

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Topographies Workshop, Rackham Graduate School, Institute for the Humanities, Departments of History of Art, History, Linguistics,  Comparative Literature, Romance Languages and Literatures, Modern Greek Studies, CMENAS, CES. Part of LSA Theme Semester, "Language: the Human Quintessence." Free and open to the public.