As a poet, Anday was one of the leaders of the
Garip movement, which also included
Orhan Veli and
Oktay Rifat. According to the preface of their joint collection, published in 1941, poetry should abandon the formalism and rhetorical classical style of previous centuries, making itself simple, colloquial, and matter of fact—an artless art designed to serve the common people. However, present there even then was an uneasy acknowledgement of French
Surrealism, and Anday was eventually to change his engaged style to a cerebral neo-surrealism as he cautiously navigated within and beyond the difficult political waters of his country. This culminated in what was regarded at the time as his masterwork, the four-sectioned long poem "Ulysses Bound" (
Turkish:
Kolları Bağlı Odysseus) of 1963. In this he deploys an original rhetoric of his own: :A slow world, in progress, with no memory :Visible only to the eye before there was an eye :Where nameless beings were advancing among other beings :Trees grew before trees were :And a star in the temple of the clouds :Opened wide the unharvested sky :To the bloody dawn of the epochs before there was reason. Other sectioned poems of some length were to follow, including "On the Nomad Sea" (
Turkish:
Göçebe Denizin Üstünde, 1970) and "A poem in the manner of
Karacaoğlan" (
Turkish:
Karacaoğlan’ın Bir Şiiri Üzerine Çeşitlemeler’de). But there were also many short poems of disarming simplicity such as "Sun" (I was just about to speak/ When suddenly the sun came out) and "Seagull" (Seagull, capital letter/ Scribbled by a child) whose thoughtful qualities journey beyond his earlier manner. From henceforth his varied work began to earn Anday official recognition. In particular his play
Mikado’nun Çöpleri (The Mikado Game) earned him several awards: Most Successful Playwright of the 1967–1968 Drama Season; the İlhan İskender Prize; Ankara Art Lovers Foundation for the Best Playwright in 1971–1972. Another play,
Ölümsüzler ya da Bir Cinayetin Söylencesi (The Immortals or the Legend of a Murder) won the Enka Art Prize in 1980. His poetry collection
Teknenin Ölümü (Death of the Boat) won the 1978
Sedat Simavi Foundation Literature Prize, and
Ölümsüzlük Ardında Gılgamış (Gilgamesh Beyond Death) gained the 1981
Türkiye İş Bankası Prize. In 1971 UNESCO honoured him among other outstanding European authors. He also received the TÜYAP Honour Prize for 1991 and the 2000
Aydın Doğan Foundation Literature Award. In 1994, the sculptor
Metin Yurdanur cast a seated statue of him in bronze which is now sited in the park named after him at Ören on the
Gulf of Gökova. Later in 1998, Yurdanur again sculpted him for a monument in the
Şairler Sofası Park. == Bibliography ==