'In Universal Mother, Elif Sezen braids the intersections of domestic histories and spiritual evolution. She navigates the large themes: complementary concepts of separation and homecoming, visible and invisible, eternity and temporality, love and grief, irony and melancholy.
'The world these poems conjure is one of imagination and mystical longing. The poet’s mother and the poet herself, as feminine, are the departure point for the persona in these poems, journeying haunted and at times ecstatic through surprising venues and occasions.
'As myth-making for a self, and as social understanding, Elif Sezen’s imagery in this book bridges the personal and the collective, in a special sense. Reflecting upon her own transcultural identity, this work carries itself across boundaries between East and West.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Dedication: To my Mother Aliye Sanli
'Elif Sezen is a talented Australian poet who grew up in Australia and in Turkey, she writes poetry both in English and in Turkish and is an interdisciplinary visual artist with a PHD in Fine Arts. Sezen’s poetry takes the reader on a cross-cultural trip where we encounter poems, which reflect the adaptation of a migrant to a new culture and a new of way of life. She also takes us into ancestral trips, into memories of far away exotic lands and on trips, which appear to arise from the deepest corners of her creative mind. Words shaded by culture, the female essence and the enigma of living adorn the pages of Universal Mother.' (Introduction)
'There is something delicious about a collection that doesn’t open itself up to the reader on a first or even second reading and yet compels them to come back to it, something delightful about lines that lodge themselves in your brain and demand a third, fourth, fifth reading to reunite them with the poems they come from.' (Introduction)
'Elif Sezen is a talented Australian poet who grew up in Australia and in Turkey, she writes poetry both in English and in Turkish and is an interdisciplinary visual artist with a PHD in Fine Arts. Sezen’s poetry takes the reader on a cross-cultural trip where we encounter poems, which reflect the adaptation of a migrant to a new culture and a new of way of life. She also takes us into ancestral trips, into memories of far away exotic lands and on trips, which appear to arise from the deepest corners of her creative mind. Words shaded by culture, the female essence and the enigma of living adorn the pages of Universal Mother.' (Introduction)
'There is something delicious about a collection that doesn’t open itself up to the reader on a first or even second reading and yet compels them to come back to it, something delightful about lines that lodge themselves in your brain and demand a third, fourth, fifth reading to reunite them with the poems they come from.' (Introduction)
