Kemalettin Kâmi Kamu

Poet

Birth
15 September, 1901
Death
06 March, 1948
Horoscope

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. 
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