Meral Divitçi Prize for
Turkish Poetry in Translation
This award is named in honor of the late Turkish poet and columnist Meral Divitçi and it has been established by her family (Charlotte and Nezih Divitçi) with the objective of encouraging translation of modern and contemporary Turkish poetry into English. The award includes a cash prize of 1,000 USD.
The competition is dedicated to translations of complete books of poems and it is administered by the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival.
2014 Winners
Sidney Wade and Efe Murad received the 2014 Divitci prize with their translations of Melih Cevdet Anday.
The selection committee members for the 2014 prize were:
John Balaban, Professor of English & Poet in Residence at NC State University
Erdağ Göknar, Associate Professor of Turkish & Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University
Mark Smith-Soto, Professor of Romance Languages, University of NC at Greensboro
On behalf of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival (NHPF), and the Divitici Family, we congratulate the winners.
Efe Murad
Efe Murad studied philosophy at Princeton and is currently working towards his Ph.D. in Ottoman History and Arabic Philosophy at Harvard. He has published five books of poetry, and three books of translations from the Iranian poets M. Azad and Fereydoon Moshiri and from the American poet C. K. Williams in Turkish. Together with poet Sidney Wade, he prepared a selection of Melih Cevdet Anday’s poetry in English, which won the Meral Divitçi Prize for Turkish Poetry in Translation in 2014 organized by the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival. His poems, writings and translations in English have appeared in journals including The American Reader, Asymptote, Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Poet Lore, Talisman, and Two Lines. His poems appeared in an installation piece “Pivot” by the American-Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander at the opening of the 13th Istanbul Biennial. He is currently working on the complete Turkish translations of Ezra Pound’s Cantos.
Project
Sidney Wade is the author of six collections of poetry: Straits & Narrows (2013), Stroke (2008), Celestial Bodies (2002), Empty Sleeves (1990); Green (1998); and Istanbul’dan/From Istanbul (1998), which was published in Turkish and English by Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, Istanbul. Professor Wade is the poetry editor of Subtropics. She served as President of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) from 2006–2007. She has a PhD in English from the University of Houston (1994), an MEd in Counseling from the University of Vermont (1978), and a BA in Philosophy, University of Vermont (1974). She teaches poetry workshops, translation workshops, and a variety of forms courses.