ALKAN, Elif Su

Poet (b. 1962, Ayvalık / Balıkesir). She is the daughter of the poet and writer Erdoğan Alkan. She completed her primary education in Ankara. After attending the Notre Dame de Sion Private French High School for Girls (1968), she attended the Ceria Tourism Training School in Belgium. She worked at the French Immigration Bureau, the review Yazko Somut and the foreign news department of the newspaper Günaydın. She moved to Paris and worked at the Turkish Embassy. She has been working at the Sipapresse Photography Agency since 1989.

Her poems and translations have been published in reviews such as Varlık, Türk Dili, Edebiyat 81, Yazko Edebiyat ve Berfin Bahar and Aujourd'hui Poeme, Poéssie/Premiere in France. Written in pure Turkish, the themes of love and loneliness, contradictions of big cities, longing for home and reflections on women behaving as if they were sexual objects are used in her poems. In the beginning with Umut (Hope), she told of her childhood longings and emotions as a teenager. Living in big cities has influenced her life too (Mayıs Sevgili - Beloved May). She fights against conservative values and has traveled extensively.

WORKS:

POETRY: Umut (Hope, 1981), Mayıs Sevgili (Beloved May, 1986), İstanbul Çok Uzaklarda (İstanbul, So Far Away, 2002).

She has also translated from English and French.