Poet, writer, dedicated member of PEN Turkey Cengiz Bektaş passed away. Intellectual. Architect. Poet. Author. Researcher. Critic. All these fused together in him. His architecture complemented his writing and poetry as did his writing and poetry his architecture. He was a Renaissance intellectual. His is a personality beyond the confines of ivory towers. An enthusiasm, excitement and delight-filled child-spirited intellectual, there among the people, on workers’ shoulders and alongside those usurped of their rights, careering headlong through history and geography.
When awarding Cengiz Bektaş the PEN Poetry Award in 2018 our statement was as such: ‘We celebrate Cengiz Bektaş as an exemplary intellectual of ours who imbues his poems with a cheerful atmosphere just as he does the buildings he fashions, who gives lodging to Turkey from the Mediterranean to the Aegean in his poems and who stresses through his struggle the importance of writers living in an organized fashion with his pro-labour, humanist approach and passion for Turkish.’ May he sleep in radiance.”
The Loss of poet, writer Cengiz Bektaş
Poet, writer, dedicated member of PEN Turkey Cengiz Bektaş passed away. Intellectual. Architect. Poet. Author. Researcher. Critic. All these fused together in him. His architecture complemented his writing and poetry as did his writing and poetry his architecture. He was a Renaissance intellectual. His is a personality beyond the confines of ivory towers. An enthusiasm, excitement and delight-filled child-spirited intellectual, there among the people, on workers’ shoulders and alongside those usurped of their rights, careering headlong through history and geography.
When awarding Cengiz Bektaş the PEN Poetry Award in 2018 our statement was as such: ‘We celebrate Cengiz Bektaş as an exemplary intellectual of ours who imbues his poems with a cheerful atmosphere just as he does the buildings he fashions, who gives lodging to Turkey from the Mediterranean to the Aegean in his poems and who stresses through his struggle the importance of writers living in an organized fashion with his pro-labour, humanist approach and passion for Turkish.’ May he sleep in radiance.”