Earthly Conditions

The first representative selection of acclaimed Turkish poet Birhan Keskin's work to be published in the US, Earthly Conditions explores the loss and longing of the human condition in the context of its separation from the non-human world. Keskin's ability to shift voices between seemingly distinct subjectivities creates a rich texture and an ambiguity that sits at the heart of her poetry. This poetry is often autobiographical, but the "I" of these poems is merged with non-human voices-stones, penguins, oceans, trees, glaciers, among others-in a way that might be termed organic. Each poem in the book opens the door to introspection in an aching search for wholeness. Although Keskin has been a major voice in the Turkish literary scene since the 1980s, she does not publish often because, as she puts it, "writing too many poems is a betrayal of both words and trees." || "I'm a gone and committed fan. These verses are dirty like the road of love." --EILEEN MYLES || "EARTHLY CONDITIONS brings us to the elemental and tender mechanisms of primordial telluric power co-existing in a biosphere commanded by noise, greed, ego. What a graceful yet seismic poet! Keskin is entangled in a poetry that never wavers, carrying us through the 'womb of the world' towards a dense sulfur 'tuff' and moves mountains as a shaman might, in a fragile circle of curing, cleansing, defying. --ANNE WALDMAN || "What does a penguin think? A spider feel? How might a glacier remember the world? Coming down mountains, out of oceans, from anthills or the underside of a leaf, EARTHLY CONDITIONS offers us new intimacies with which to sense the non-human choruses that braid, encircle, and co-constitute the limited human scene. Practicing maximal attention, subtly querying various morphisms, these poems re-enchant our most vital exchanges -- 'you are in a dream, hea, you are the dream.' Drawing from five of Keskin's previous books, Tekten's marvelous translations give English language poetry and its readers a vivid and profound poet whose exquisite naturalisms we'd do well to heed." --HANNAH BROOKS-MOTL || Turkish Literature. Ecopoetics. Women Authors. LGBTQ+. Poetry. Translation.