Insaf Yalçinkaya
Insaf Yalçinkaya/Shamaran
Insaf is a Kurdish poet born in Dersim in the Turkish part of Kurdistan. After a Bachelor degree she taught in Primary and Secondary schools. She was a political activist, and also a Political Consultancy Advisor. She has also shown ceramics in several art exhibitions. Her articles have been published in national and local magazines and newspapers in Turkey. She has started to collect her poems and after she moved to Ireland she started to translate her poems into English. She came to Ireland seeking asylum and is still awaiting a decision about her status. Her poems are published in Correspondences an anthology by Stinging Fly, in the MASI Journal and in Flare 14 by Dublin’s Sunflowers Session. She is a member of Dublin Writer’s Forum. Her artwork Shamaran is made from wood, pine cones and plasterwork. Shahmaran from the Persian words ‘Shah’ king, and ‘mar-an’ meaning snakes. This is a legend of the Kurds. It comes from Mesopotamia. The story of Shahmaran is told the most in Mardin city in the south-east Anatolian region of Turkey. A lot of souvenirs and portraits are made in Mardin and are related to this mother Goddess of the Kurds. In prehistory Shahmaran lived in a heaven in the sky then she was obliged to move underground due to the people’s betrayal, she founded a new heaven there. She knows all the secrets of the universe about the past and the future.