The collage titled "Poetry is dead" questions whether poetry, literature, and art still hold any power in today’s world — amid wars, isolation, and the noise of information and images.
On one hand, it draws from a personal memory of art’s transformative power, recalling moments when it changed me and those around me; on the other, it asks where that power stands today, and whether it is still possible.
The collage employs the sarcastic side of poetry to create an affirmative anti-slogan.
The project is part of the subtheme The Poetics of Care – Intimacy, Tenderness, Repair.
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.
