Efe Duyan translates the silent intention behind our instinctive, urgent need of human expression and connection. Duyan’s poetry is based on finding unique linguistic forms that fit the respective content of the poem. Through a visible structure, he combines complex metaphors in a rhythmic way, to integrate the daily language by decontextualizing it, and to construct a network of meaning in the background. He is influenced by the art movements of Futurism, Surrealism, conceptual art, and medieval Middle Eastern poetry as well as the modern conception of functionality in architecture.
Some poems, built like houses with architectural intention, draw us in through their overall design, clean fine lines breaking at striking angles, guiding our eyes through carefully defined spaces opening to hallways that irresistibly lead us to unexpected enclosures where natural light plays among the walls breathe life into the lives for which they are intended. Where form and function are inseparable, the space is not merely for dwelling. It asks to be experienced. Physically, materially.
Efe Duyan
Call Center
welcome
to relive the day you met your school friends
please press your lucky number
for the times you ran tirelessly around the yard
press random numbers
for the steamed-up
windows of truck stops
enter the year of your last family summer vacation
everybody has times they’re ashamed of
pick a number and keep it to yourself
for the tea and poğaça breakfasts on the campus green
put the receiver down and run to the balcony
if you wish to complain about time rushing helter-skelter
please press and hold zero with all your strength
if you can’t quite remember your grandfather
look in the mirror
for the dust smell in vintage bookstores
say the third letter of the name
of a laborer who can’t read or write
for your neighborhood tailor who was found dead in tattered clothes
please hold
for the woman in your sleep
for that unforeseen moment when you touched her neck
wait for the beep then
press the same number over and over
the day after you were ditched
write in your notebook one hundred times
I will never fall in love again
beep
Maybe One Day
maybe
the stubborn habits
we pluck like loose buttons
in a fit of laughter
maybe
the unacknowledged grief
we share
like a birthday cake
maybe
fate
we slice finely with a large bread knife
and turn into an architectural whimsy
maybe
the absence of a departed we receive like a gift
and place in the most special corner
of the house
maybe
the fear of death
we throw in the bonfire
along with dry branches to add spark to our joy
maybe
everything lost to my memory
I blow into
a colorful balloon
maybe
all the words
into polysemous words
as acts of political dissent
maybe
the evil that the world serves in a picture-menu
after we confess we can’t know everything
in the name of everyone
maybe
the seed of a hostile instinct
before it turns
into a massacre that we will read about in books
maybe
the plans to save the world
after asking the world
how it wants to be saved
maybe
seizing our own puppet strings
every incontestable taboo
zealously
maybe
no, absolutely
ourselves too
