In the 1930’s, he and his friends Oktay Rifat and Melih Cevdet
started the “Garip” Movement. It’s also known as “First New
Movement”. “Garip” means strange, poor, and forlorn in Turkish.
Orhan Veli wrote the “Garip Manifesto”, you might find it’s English
translation. They used “Turkish” without Persian and Arabic words. In
those years, Turkish wasn’t like how it is in today; even now it’s not
that easy to understand the works written in these years for an ordinary
Turk. But we can all understand the works written by these poets.
Another thing about Garip Movement is that they didn’t use rhyme very much. Orhan Veli didn’t
use the forms in his poems either and in my opinion this is why I love him and his poems; it makes
them more intimate. Anyway, Garip Movement was a revolution in Turkish Literature.
He and his friends were publishing their poems
in a magazine named “Yaprak” (Leaf) which was
a magazine with a few pages prepared and
distributed by Garip poets. When Orhan Veli died
unexpectedly in 1950 at the age of just 36, his
friends published the last issue named “Son
Yaprak” (the Last Leaf). For me, this is the
saddest part of his life story…
Now, I’d like to present you some poems
written by him. You may listen to them read by
Müşfik Kenter with piano if you search “Bir
Garip Orhan Veli” on the net. But they are not the
only good ones; there are some works with
different forms such as his short story book
named “Hoşgör Köftecisi”. I love this book very
much; it’s one of my favorites! And you may find his other poems translated in English on the net,
too. I have one more thing to say, and then I’ll leave you alone with his poems: even if he wrote
them with a simple language than the other poets did; they anyway can’t be that impressing as they
are translated to English, or another language.
48