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CHILD'S HOME-VERSE

CHILDREN'S ILLUSTRATION BOOK, AUGUST 2020

As a part of the Workshop Series ‘Evin Halleri’ (‘Cases of the House’), which is titled after the poem by leading Turkish poet of 40’s generation, Behçet Necatigil, « İlhan Berk, Şeyler Kitabı: Ev » workshop led by Architect Cem Sorguç takes İlhan Berk’s, another leading contemporary Turkish poet, poetry book ‘Şeyler Kitabı: Ev’ (‘Book of Things: House’) at the center, and participants are expected to create texts, short movies, drawings, models, photographs and various other tools; a metaphor of a house, a home, a shelter or free form of narratives in the context of the book in question.


​​​​​​​My final creation as a result of the workshop; a visual and textual collage-narrative / handmade illustration book, on house through the eyes of the child, components that makes the house ‘the home’ coming together in their world, and their enthusiasm for creating their own universe within the house.


Children’s book for adults.

« for childhood is certainly greater than reality. »


— Gaston Bachelard, 'The Poetics of Space'

« The house we were born in is
more than an embodiment of home,
it is also an embodiment of dreams.
Each one of its nooks and corners
was a resting place for daydreaming. »


— Gaston Bachelard, 'The Poetics of Space​​​​​​​'

the smallest nooks, holes and corridors
we could fit in as a child,
become a shelter, a refuge for us
in our house game.

 

« house is room.
an island.
(on its own)
a call for inward.
an ode to closeness, loneliness. »


— İlhan Berk, 'Book of Things: House'

we often hide from someone,
some things,
or each other there.


but it is such a hiding that as if
waiting to be searched and found.

some of these shelters
would be softer, more flexible.
covered with a sheet for example.

 

some wind,
or a mother’s grasp
bares the nook underneath.