Bio
A Laz poet from Turkey, Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey. He was influenced by his parents
to study at the Navy Military Lycee, but was dismissed from the school in 1995 because of disciplinary
problems and subsequently became a vigorous anti-militarist.
His poems appear in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey. In 2004, he published a poem manifesto,
entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. He has been trying to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to
this end has published numerous articles about literary theory. The basic mottos of the movement are
"Imagist in form, socialist in content" and "If you have no fight, you don't have any poem."
His poems have been published in English in The Tower Journal, Poetry'z Own, Belleville Park Pages,
The Writer's Drawer, Open Road Review, Poetry Super Highway, The Criterion and Mediterranean Poetry.
Some of his poems appear in Japanese in the leading Japanese philosophy and poetry journal Shi to Shisou.
Serkan Engin
Purple Suicides
I am loading purple suicides into the cartridge clip of my life
Death symphonies are brushing past my face
A pitch-black laugh is dropping down to my front side from my hairs
Nobody sees the rumble of the rivers raveling out from my inside
My dreams are fusilladed while hands of grief are choking me
My words are feeling cold when desolateness rubs up against my legs
I am loading purple suicides into the cartridge clip of my life
Death symphonies are brushing past my face