Nedim Türfent, Kurdish-Turkish, journalist

Nedim Türfent is serving an eight-year-and-nine- month prison sentence on trumped-up terrorism charges following an unfair trial, during which scores of witnesses said they had been tortured into testifying against him. He spent almost two years in solitary confinement in harrowing detention conditions. Determined to keep writing, he started composing poetry while detained. (PEN International)

For Poetry Day Ireland, we want to invite everyone to write a poetic letter, or a poetic message of few lines, to be sent to artists and activists who are imprisoned by dictatorships at the moment.  Letters With Wings

This is my poem:

The Journalist – for Nedim Türfent

Artery that carries blood from the nation’s heart

Through the whole body to the smallest member

So the nation’s heart can welcome back

The life lived and renew it, all the nation’s blood.

This is the ideal. We fail but we get up again,

Carrying life, in words, to our brothers, sisters… nations.

Letter with Wings supports PEN International

Members of PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favour of good understanding and mutual respect between nations and people; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel all hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace and equality in one world.