V. Kerim Bekem

Poet. She was born in Rome / Italy (1947). She started to use Bekem as her last name after she was married to Painter Muzaffer Bekem; and the name Kristina O’Donnely after her second marriage in USA. She is the single daughter of an Austrian mother who was an opera artist and an Albanian journalist-writer father from Skopje. She was grown up in Turkey where they migrated when she was one and a half years old. She went to school at Kadıköy Ihsan Sungu Primary School and Austrian and German high schools in Istanbul. She acted in three movies when she was a child.

She started to write poems with the encouragement of her father. She wrote columns in Tercüman newspaper with the pseudonym of Narin Bekem under the name “Dünya Evi”. Her series of articles named “History of Chinese Art” were published in the Istanbul Dergisi of Istanbul Municipality for five issues. Her articles were also published in several literature and art journals. Her poems and paintings were exhibited twice in Istanbul Municipality Art Gallery. She moved to USA when she was twenty three years old. She wrote many articles for a journal named Türk Evi in New York.

WORKS:

POETRY: Yaşayan Roman (1968).

NOVEL: Ride The Eagle (1987, Türkiye’de Sevgili Düşmanım Adıyla 2003), The Horseman (1999), The Scorpion Child (2000), Waltz With the Wind (Karina di Coure adıyla, 2001), Sonsuzluğa İsyan (2004), Trojan Enchantment (2005).

REFERENCE: V. Recai Velibeyoğlu / ÖBBŞKA (vol. 1, 1975), TDOE – TDE Ansiklopedisi 2 (2002), İhsan Işık (TEKAA, 2009).