Droste Festival: Lütfiyeah / Döndü

Reading with Music, Discussion
with Çiğdem Bektaş, Lütfiye Güzel, Ayşe Kalmaz, Canan Menekşe

Two authors will read on opening night. Both use language to capture the present and the past. Both write about emotions and memories—both big and small—but in very different ways.

Poet Lütfiye Güzel reads from her latest collection of poems,*lüfiyeah*. Just like the title, the poems are short, to the point, and therefore strike a chord. The reading takes listeners through a range of emotions.

This is followed by a staged reading by Çiğdem Bektaş, Ayşe Kalmaz, and Canan Menekşe, in whichDöndü—the “returnee”—takescenter stage: a first-generation guest worker who never truly returned home loses her memory of her entire life in Germany. At age 90, in a nursing home in Krefeld, her dementia allows her to return to the place where her life took a decisive turn: to Ankara, to the moment when she decided not to return to her village. To the place where she left her three children behind so she could work in Germany—in the hope of securing a better future for them. Her daughter, Canan Menekşe, writes to prevent this memory from fading away. Director Ayşe Kalmaz stages the text, with musical accompaniment by Çiğdem Bektaş.

More about the program