Rüştü Onur

Rüştü Onur was born in Zonguldak, a key northwestern Turkish port city for the development of the Turkish heavy industry and economy with its coal mines in the early 20th century. His short life coincided with the traumatic effects of the two world wars, drastic economic consequences of the Great Depression, and an ardent revolutionary movement instigated by the new and modern Turkish Republic. As a result, his poetry is often marked by an acute sense of poverty, fear, and anxiety World War II, yet a desire to enjoy life through the appreciation of beauty and clinging on to the simplest things life has to offer. 

The city of Zonguldak holds a vital place in the poetry of Onur. This small coastal city often prefigures in his poetry as spatial entrapment. However, the city also shaped his poetic craft as it provided him with thematic and contextual material. During high school years at Mehmet Çelikel, he met important figures such as Behçet Necatigil, a teacher and a leading poet of the Turkish literature scene at the time, and his fellow poet, Muzaffer Tayyip Uslu. Tragically, however, the city that gave him his poetic vision also took his life. Malnourishment, poverty, and air pollution due to intense coal mining around the city weakened the lungs of the poet. He stayed in Heybeliada Sanatorium (Istanbul) to receive treatment for his tuberculosis during the winter of 1941-42. Despite his recovery, he got tuberculosis again in Zonguldak. In one of his hospitalisations, he met another patient Mediha Sessiz. They got engaged in the fall of 1942 and moved to Istanbul. Their happy marriage was shattered by the untimely death of Mediha. Onur was devastated by the death of his wife. Soon after, in one of his intense drinking sessions to mourn her death, he suffocated by coughing up blood on December 1, 1942.

Onur’s poetry is highly influenced by the Garip Movement of the 1940s, which was a reaction to the highly formalised, metrical, and stylised tradition of Turkish poetry. Instead, the movement embraces the use of colloquial language, free verse, and topics from everyday life. Onur published his early poems in the local poetry journals of Zonguldak, such as Karaelmas and Değirmen, and national journals such as Yeni İnsanlık, Varlık, and Ses. Posthumously, his published and unpublished poems were compiled by Salâh Birsel under the name Rüştü Onur: Şiirleri - Mektupları - Ardından Yazılanlar (1956). His poems are remarkable sources that give insight not only to the bitter socio-economic realities of the early days in modern Turkey but also to the newly emerging literary Garip Movement that marks a revolutionary change in the long history of Turkish literature.