Julie Ward on a bitter-sweet collection
Separated from the Sun by İlhan Sami Çomak published by Smokestack Books
İlhan Sami Çomak is a prolific award-winning Kurdish poet with 9 collections to his name, all of them published during his three decades as one of Turkey’s longest-serving political prisoners. Çomak was arrested in 1994 whilst still a student and charged with membership of the banned PKK. After 19 days of torture he signed a confession and was sentenced to death for the crime of “separatism”. This was later commuted to life. The ECHR ruled that his conviction was unlawful and Çomak has twice appealed, sadly to no avail. He was denied conditional release in 2023 and is now expected to be freed in August 2024.
Separated From The Sun is a slim volume of 50 selected poems. Despite his life of extraordinary privation Çomak’s work is a bitter-sweet affirmation of the human spirit. He draws extensively on childhood memories and the natural world, documenting the simple pleasures that are denied him and travelling in his imagination to places both known and unknown.
Images of songbirds fly between the pages, soaring skywards, traversing unseen mountain ranges, across landscapes sketched from memory. Çomak’s love affair with the world beyond his prison bars is understandable but this is not a maudlin self-pitying introspective collection. Rather it is a conversation with the reader. Some poems are direct responses to various writers/campaigners/intellectuals whilst others are dedicated to key people in Çomak’s life, including the veteran human rights campaigner Margaret Owen. “No cage can contain the colours of my heart and breath…”
Indeed, the day cannot come soon enough when this extraordinary human being can taste freedom at last.