Poet and
interpretor (b.1930, Muş – d. 29 June 1989, İzmir). He was elder brother of
İkram Saraç, writer and translator. After he graduated from Ankara Gazi
Institute of Education, Department of French (1952), he was educated in French
Literature and phonetics at Sorbonne University in Paris
where he had been sent by the state (1953-54). When he returned to Turkey, he worked as a teacher of literature in Trabzon and Samsun
High Schools and the Gazi
Institute of Education. He retired in 1970 due to health problems. He was a
member of the Committee of Instruction and Behavior at the Ministry of National
Education. He was a member of the editorial teams of the reviews Tercüme and Türk Dili. He was arrested twice because of his political ideas
after 12 March and then released.
His first poem was published in the review Varlık (1954), after 1956 in the reviews Varlık, Dost, Papirüs and mostly in Türk Dili. He did translations from French to Turkish and some
Turkish poems to French. He was awarded the Legion d'Honneur (1968) by the
French government for translations and with the medal of Endre Edy (1979) for
his translations from Hungarian literature. In addition, in 1963 he won the
Superior Achievement Award of the Ministry of National Education, the Turkish
Language Association translation award in 1964 with his research and anthology, Günümüz Fransız Şiiri (Contemporary
French Poetry, 1963) and the Turkish Radio and Television 1970 Art Awards
Contest Grand Award with his poetry book, Direnmeler
(Resisting). He won the Art Appreciation Association Best Translation Award
in 1980 and the Lotus Award of the Asia-Africa Writers Union in 1986.
WORKS:
POETRY: Bir Ölümsüz Yalnızlık (An Immortal
Loneliness, 1965), Güneş Kavgası (Fight
for the Sun, 1968), Direnmeler (Resisting,
1973), Poems Choisis (Selected Poems,
translation of 31 poems into French, with Ayhan Özden, 1974), Güvercin Kasapları (Pigeon Butchers,
1978), Bir Sevgiyi Görüntüleme (Imaging
of Love, 1980), Toplu Şiirler (Collected
Poems, 1986).
