Dear friends,
Happy New Year! Nice yeni yıllara! I hope everything is well with you!
2009 was a remarkable year for me.
Bekir died. He was adopted from an Italian sculptor. Stately like no other cat I have known, he was a good being, a good companion. He could leave me, like any cat easily, enviably could, I'd think, but chose not to when I was kicked out of my home, even when some human friends could not deal with me and my seemingly endless misery. They are gone, but Bekir stayed with me.
Now he is dead. His sister Gümüş is still with us.
Rest in peace, our good, old Bekir!
Meanwhile I turned 50, got married (again! After a New York divorce! Somehow able to pay my rent!) and- I saw my father again after 29 (twentynine!) years! How many exclamation marks can you possibly cram into a single year?
Some locations I returned to this year: Dia:Beacon (to find -again- Tapies, Smithson, Serra and Bourgeois), Peace Pagoda (in Leverett), Magic Wings (in Greenfield, to find -again- Madagascar cockroaches), Big Chicken Barn Books (in Maine), Brick House Bookshop (in Morrisville) and Wellfleet Drive-In Theater (to watch, in rain, "District 9"!)
"Land of Smiles / Gülümsemeler Ülkesi", my bilingual collection of poetry, with original woodcuts by Vladimir Ginzburg, came out:
You can read the poem which gave the collection its title
here.
"Manhattan'da Şiir Konuşmaları" (Poetry Talks in Manhattan), a collection of my writings about poetry, poems and poets, came out, also:
I and Amy Spangler are putting the finishing touches on the last leg of our İstanbul Noir Project. It will feature ten stories in Turkish, including one by yours truly. It will strike out soon!
"Letters to Distant Cities" is still progressing, also. It's becoming a hybrid project featuring my poetry, photography and videography by Murat Eyüboğlu, music and spoken word by Shara Worden, Clare Muldaur and Rob Moose, mixing by Alex Venguer, editing by David Sarno, design by Adam Frint and images of Jamie Ansley. You can see examples from the photographs and read excerpts
here.
Your can see stills from one of the videos
here.
I hope I'll hear from you soon!
Selamlar, sevgiler!
Mustafa Ziyalan
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