A review on Yahya Akengin's life, art and works

Yahya Akengin, was born in Bayburt in 1946, took his first serious step into literary environment in 1968 with the publication of his poem in Hisar magazine. The 1960s were the years when form and content in poetry found a basis for discussion, and polarization gained momentum whereas the 1970s were years when literature and art were increasingly politicized by the effect of ideological tensions and street events. In this process, Akengin, who keeps his poetry away from ideological discourse, focuses on the inner world of the individual, and moreover, he inevitably has sensitivity to social life. These sensitivities continued in his post-1980 poetry, and in his recent poems he has seemed to lean on nationalist sensibility. Although the main structure appears as free verse in Akengin's poem, which aims to establish an aesthetic in the mix of divan, folk and modern poetry, elements of tradition manifest themselves in form and content. Recently, the poems written in the syllablic meter have brought about an increase with the strengthening nationalist rhetoric. In post-1980, Akengin, who stood out with his poems as well as theatre, novels, screenplays and stories, emphasizes nationalist sensitivity over social and historical issues in his theatrical works. In his novel writing study, which he started in 1981, he provides a broad framework from individual and social problems to political and ideological tensions and focuses on the painful periods of Turkey after 1950, which he avoided expressing in his poetry. In his stories published in 2017, he discusses the experiences, anxiety and sensitivities of older people. Akengin has made a substantial contribution to Turkish literature in the context of nationalist and conservative sensation with his poetry and fiction works, writing, memoirs and cultural activities. This study discusses his life, art and work as holistic approach and it aims to reveal the thematic and structural elements in its poems and novels.