Poet
(b. 15 September 1901, Bayburt - d. 6 March 1948, Ankara). He was at the final
year at İstanbul Teachers Training School for Boys when the Turkish National
Independence War began; therefore he left for Ankara (1920). He worked at the
Publications and Information Directorate and the Anatolian Agency. When the war
was over, he went back to İstanbul and received his diploma and studied
political science in Paris for five years, where he was sent as an Anatolian
Agency correspondent (1933). On his return, he was elected as the parliamentary
deputy of Rize (1939) and Erzurum (1943-46). He is buried at Cebeci Graveyard.
The poems of Kamu, known as
the “Poet of the Foreign Land” in Turkish literature, were published in the
review Büyük Mecmua during the years
of the armistice (1919), and in Dergâh
during the years of the Independence War (1921) and later in the reviews Varlık (1933-34) and Oluş (1939); his articles were published
in newspapers Hakimiyet-i Milliye and
Yenigün. His poems, which he wrote in
syllabic and prosodic meter, on war, love and foreign lands, were collected in
the book Kemalettin Kamu, Hayatı,
Şahsiyeti ve Şiirleri (Kemalettin Kamu, His Life, Character and Poems by
Rıfat Necdet Evrimer, 1949). His poems in prosodic meter demonstrate
interesting examples of the implementation of prosodic meter in Turkish during
the Republican Era. Furthermore, during his years in Paris, he was interested
in French poetry and translated three poems of the French symbolist poet
Mallarmé.
