I started writing this text after being diagnosed with AIDS in 2016. I continued writing it after the surgeries on my leg tumor. I tried to convey the concept of illness and its place in our lives and in the world, but I began doing so from a more personal perspective, with an effort to make it more social. This poem is also an account of how queer individuals have struggled for survival during the politically oppressive era we have lived through in the last twenty years.
At the same time, it was an important process for me to face and heal from the challenges of being a queer individual in the region I live in. When this text was published as a book, I received positive feedback from people regarding both its content and technique. This long poem transformed me, making me a stronger person in terms of my identity and health. My goal is to ensure that individuals living with HIV around the world can access this text. To achieve this, I am seeking an agency and translation support.
The project is part of the subthemes Re-imagining identity through poetry, Healing Narratives - Poetry, Mental Health and Collective Trauma, Cultural Resilience - Literature as a force for social justice.
Author
Emre Varışlı
Born in Istanbul in 1985, the author participated in the "Creative Thinking and Writing" seminars organized by Kaçak Yayın magazine in 2004. During these seminars, they attended readings and workshops by master writers and poets, and their first poems were published in Kaçak Yayın.
In the same year, they began publishing a literary fanzine called Çamur. In the following years, their stories, poems, and free-form writings appeared in magazines and fanzines such as Varlık, Underground Poetix, Bireylikler, Arkadaş, and Akatalpa. Meanwhile, they also organized and participated in various reading and performance events. During the 2008-2009 Şiiristanbul festivals, they were part of the "Yeni Renkler" section and even organized this segment of the festival.
In 2011, they began writing contemporary reviews for KaosGL.org. They were noted as "worthy of attention" by the juries of the Yaşar Nabi Nayır Poetry Award in 2010 and the Arkadaş Zekai Özger Poetry Award in 2011. Their work was featured in the YKY Poetry Yearbook and Şimşiir 2011 annual poetry compilations. Additionally, they were the only poet from Turkey included in SubFactory's Conversations with Poets book series.
