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ForewordRenowned Poets: Nazım Hikmet The March 2024 issue of our international monthly book, The Year of the Poet, has its focus on the Turkish modernist poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, memoirist and activist Nazım Hikmet. As a native from Turkey-born, raised and schooled there, who independently studied the books of this "Blue-Eyed Giant" after the ban on them was lifted in 1965, I assert that his life and works demand voluminous analyses . . . a task that cannot be completed within the constraints of this text. Being acutely aware of the challenge at hand, I shall resort to your understanding for the brevity of my words. A few factual glimpses on the personal and literary phenomenon that the name Nazım Hikmet embodies will have to suffice. One three-step-fact remains unchanged; namely, that Nazım is universally acknowledged as Turkey's exceptional modern poet but also as a world poet, and has exhausted-continues to exhaust-the research venues of countless minds at home as well as abroad. Nazım Hikmet was born in 1902 as Mehmet Nazım Ran in Selânik and raised in Istanbul. When Turkey was occupied by her allies after World War I, he left for the Soviet Union [sic]. His higher education included his degree in Economics and Sociology at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow. It is there where Russian Futurists and Symbolists, writers and visual artists, as well as Lenin's ideology influenced him. When the Turkish War of Independence resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1924, Hikmet returned to Turkey. Soon after his return to his beloved motherland Turkey, Nazım started working for Aydınlık, a liberal newspaper. Having stigmatized his person and his work as "Communist", the Turkish state banned his poems. In addition, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition but fled to the Soviet Union, returning to Turkey in 1928 and settling in İstanbul. There, he worked at various newspapers and magazines and film studios, published his first poetry books and wrote his plays (1928-1932). In 1938, Nazım Hikmet was charged as a "traitor" for the crime of inciting the Turkish armed forces to revolt. He was sentenced to 28 years and 4 months in prison. After serving approximately 11 years of his sentence, an international campaign fought for his release. A committee that included Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, and Jean-Paul Sartre was formed in 1949, and in the spring of 1950, Hikmet began a hunger strike in protest of the Turkish Parliament for its failure to include an amnesty law in its agenda before it closed for the upcoming general election. He was freed under the forgiveness law of 1950 at last. As the recorded numbers and facts of history reveal, much of Nazım Hikmet's life was spent behind prison walls: 17 years in Turkish prisons and another 12 years in exile. After his death of a heart attack in Moscow in 1963, his works continued to be banned in Turkey until 1965. Multiple decades after his death, highly justified celebrations are being conducted around the world for this "Blue-Eyed Giant", as Nazım Hikmet became to be known posthumously. Knowing now that he knew to say "I lived", it seems only appropriate for us to conclude our brief visit with his own celebratory words: [...] hülya n. yılmaz, Ph.D. Professor Emerita (Liberal Arts), Penn State, U.S.A.Director of Editing Services atInner Child Press International, U.S.A.

ForewordRenowned Poets Omar Khayyam Omar Khayyam (1048 - 1123) was a Persian poet, famous for his Rubaiyat form of poetry built upon quatrains. He was also a well-known philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, mystic and a free-thinker, who wondered about the impermanence of life, and man's relationship to God. He lived in a time period when fanaticism, orthodoxy and military demagogues controlled and dictated people's daily life. Through his poems, Khayyam encouraged people to break free from the socio-political and religious tyranny. Unfortunately, his poems could not be circulated openly due to a callous an intolerant environment. As a result, only few of his contemporaries had the chance to read and benefit from it. He doubted the existence of divine providence and the afterlife and chose to put his faith in a joyful appreciation of the fleeting and sensuous beauties of the material world to celebrate the idyllic nature and pleasures of living in a moment as below: Set not thy heart on any good or gain, life means but pleasure, or means but pain;when Time lets slip a little perfect hour, >Khayyam warned that if self-care is neglected and postponed to some obscure notion of 'tomorrow', the pleasure of living in the 'now' is irreversibly lost. He believed that each moment of life is complete in itself, by itself, and that the incompleteness manifests itself only in the 'mental state' of which we are not often aware. The natural world lives independently for itself, unattached to our feelings of pain and joy, and in Khayyam's view, acknowledging this liberating fact is the first step towards having a pleasant life. He said not to take things too seriously and to question existence of God and heaven: Grab life with both your hands, squeeze every bit it has to offer, cherish it every day.>Some scholars and critics argue that the name of Omar Khayyam should "be struck out from the history of Persian literature" due to the lack of any material that could confidently be attributed to him. While it is certain that Khayyam wrote many quatrains, it is hardly possible, save in a few exceptional cases, to assert positively that he wrote any of those ascribed to him. The modern-day popularity of Khayyam is mainly due to the English translations of Edward FitzGerald (1859) from the Bodleian manuscript. Ashok K. BhargavaPresident, Writers International Network CanadaVancouver, BC

Foreword Renowned Poets: Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley was the first African American and the first woman to publish a book, the first woman, to make a living from her writing, and all was accomplished while being a slave. Through her work, Phillis Wheatley is credited with helping create the foundation of African American Literature and provide inspiration to African American emancipation of slavery. Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 in Gambia. I couldn't find any information on her birth parents. When she was seven or eight years old, she was forcibly kidnapped and brought across the Atlantic (United States) on the ship called Phillis. Phillis was a small, sick child when she was sold as a slave to John Wheatley, (a wealthy Boston Merchant.) His wife, Susanna Wheatley, was in a search for a young female servant to help her and her daughter, Mary, in domestic duties. She was named after the ship, Phillis, that brought her across to the United States. Then she received her last name, Wheatley from her master. John and Susanna knew she was very intelligent. She was dismissed from her duties. Instead, Susanna and her daughter, Mary, taught her to read and to write. They encouraged her to write poetry. They also taught her religion, language, literature, and history. At the age of twelve, Phillis published her first poem, "On Messrs Hussey and Coffin," about sailors escaping disaster. Susanna Wheatley supported Phillis as she wrote her first book of poems, "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published in London. She couldn't get her book published here in the United States because she was African American and a woman. But Nathaniel, the master's son, took her to London to get it published. Susanna's friend, Selina Hastings, funded her book publication. After her book was published, she was emancipated from slavery. She married John Peters, a free black man who was a shopkeeper. They had children but none survived infancy. Her husband was sent to prison for debt. Phillis had to work as a scullery maid at a boarding house, doing work she had never done before. She developed pneumonia and died on December 5, 1784 after giving birth to her daughter who died shortly after her. I am very impressed with Phillis Wheatley and her poetry. She's very talented and gifted poet. She stands for truth, honesty, hope, dreams, and freedom. She brings hope to the African American, women and to all the people. She has been through so much but still never gave up hope, she kept pushing on. Let us honor her and her poetry. Noreen Snyder

ForewordChildren: Difference MakersMelati and Isabel Wijsen As I write down these words, children are being killed by war mongers in several parts of the world yet once again. The lives of our most precious are being cut abruptly and violently yet once again, only to count as numbers of "fatalities"-if at all. It is a no-brainer to imagine that some of those children could have become notable enough to be honored for their groundbreaking inventions, discoveries or services to humanity at large, had they been allowed to live the natural course of their times on Earth. Not unlike the focus of the issue in your hands-Melati and Isabel Wijsen. For the entire year of 2023, our monthly book's Poetry Posse and all featured poets had their eyes on children who made a difference on and to our planet. While calling attention to the humanitarian services of Melati Wijsen and Isabel Wijsen in 2023's final month, I cannot help but view the bigger picture: What if these Indonesian sisters, 10- and 12-years old respectively when they attained the consciousness to raise a much-needed awareness among their fellow humans, were born into one of our modern-day war-torn countries? What if one of the siblings or both then became "a casualty" in that world region? Two remarkably influential children, who made a difference of consequence in and for our earthly plane, would have been dismissed, or better yet, discarded at the same speed and with the same indifference as all the children killed in wars in so-called modern times. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recently reported its ongoing data, stating that one out of every five children worldwide live within armed conflict zones. A total of 2,985 children were killed across 24 countries in 2022, 2,515 in 2021, 2,674 in 2020 across 22 countries, and 4,019 children in 2019-according to the last three Annual Reports of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict. How many of those who are anon counted among the dead could have or would have become significant contributors to our humanity's needs and for its development? So, as we through our poems celebrate the achievements of two sisters from Bali, I am reminded of the horrendous realities of all the children who presently are bound to those world zones where there is an armed conflict. We can only hope, as I desperately want to, that children in the likes of the Bali-natives Melati and Isabel Wijsen from Indonesia would one day survive the mindset of warmongering before it is birthed. hülya n. yılmaz, Ph.D. Penn State Professor Emerita, Liberal ArtsDirector of Editing Services, Inner Child Press International

ForewordChildren: Difference Makers: Ryan Hreljac "Jus give me cool drink of water fore I die" Ms. Maya said. And sometimes it is just that. The need to quench a longing for something so basic in life that we can't imagine living without it. Water is a basic component of living. Everything around us, including us, is made up of large amounts of water. We cannot survive without it. The access to this life sustaining element, although essential, is often unavailable to large populations on the earth. Given man's proclivity to pollution, containment and even hoarding has created a world where we must go in search of water. Where rivers once flowed now sit houses and factories. Where waterfalls were once free to carve paths across our landscapes, we have created man-made recreational parks and such where the privilege can go to see what we have prohibited to the poor. Our featured free thinker and doer has understood what many have not. We need to ensure that water and other necessities are available for everyone. It may take one to plant a seed of refreshment. It may take many to dig a well. It may take a government to break a dam. It will take a world to turn back the environment. What we don't have is the luxury of letting someone die for a cool drink of water. Needs cannot always be a desire. Gail Weston ShazorAuthor Artist Humanitarian