«Smile, gentlemen, smile!»

From feature film «That Very Munchausen»

More than forty years have passed since the publication of wonderful books for children Jeňňel ýodasy “Path in the Forest” and Guş hiňňildigi “Bird Swing”. Since then, their author, the famous Turkmen writer, poet, playwright, winner of the Hadji Ismailov Prize, Hemra Shirov, has forever established himself as one of the brightest and most interesting writers in modern Turkmen literature.

His works have been translated into Russian, Persian, Turkish, Tatar, Afghan, Japanese, German, and Estonian; his books were published in many countries around the world.

In 1997, a collection of his poems, “The Beautiful World of Children” was published in Iran, translated by Yousef Gojoug and with magnificent illustrations by Nilofar Mirmohammadi. So, this collection took first place in the sales ranking of translated literature published in 1997. 

“The Beautiful World of Children” translated by Yousef Gojoug with magnificent illustrations by Nilofar Mirmohammadi.

He has written a number of plays, including musical and historical dramas, fairy tales for children, successfully staged at the capital and regional theaters.

Not many people know that thanks to the translations of Hemra Shirov, the Turkmen readers first became acquainted with the works of Daniil Harms, Eduard Uspensky, Tim Sobakin, Jazep Osmanis, Andrey Usachev; Through his efforts, the “nice guy” Robin Hood spoke Turkmen.

Working in various literary genres, he always strived to keep up with the times to explore new spaces for creation. It is not surprising that his work includes many poems created in the genre of visual versification. We can say that he is the only Turkmen poet who writes in this genre. For example, have you ever seen a carpet that a woman wants to sell through the eyes of her little son? Here it is, in the poet’s verse, instead of gels “ornaments”, the boy sees köke “cookies”, kemput “candy”, and şokolad “chocolate bars” on it.

Carpet That a Woman Wants To Sell Through the Eyes of Her Little Son

The next one is a poem Horaz Süýji meaning Lollipop Cockerel and having its shape. In this small, seemingly cheerful poem, the author shows his fundamental view of childhood as a period in the life of every person when children’s joys should not be forgotten. This very real happiness should not be replaced with age by the pursuit of illusory material benefits.

Lollipop Cockerel

When I was a little boy, I loved you so much, lollipop cockerel.

Still now, when I see you, I buy and enjoy you without hesitation.

Agree, many people, growing up, somehow forget that they were children. It seems that they were born this way - with a briefcase in hand - they are so serious as if the childhood memories are completely removed from their hearts. They look down at the children as they climb the stairs, which, in their opinion, lead upward. The step of childhood remains somewhere below, so is it worth thinking about it when you need to climb a little more, and there will certainly be happiness? They chase vain happiness and live in the name of the future, while not noticing the present and not remembering the past. The world has long lost its colors for them; it has become black and white, as boring as the memorized clichés flying from their lips.  

«Love the child in yourself, and finally find out what that child, whom you have long forgotten, wanted” Hemra Shirov seems to be saying from the pages of his books, because he himself is one of those types of people who never for a minute part with their childhood ideals of goodness and justice. He never stopped feeling like a tomboy: resilient, brave and happy; never tired of being the explorer of the most extraordinary places on the planet called Fantasy. He carefully preserves the memory of his childhood, filled with daily small discoveries. He remembers everything - how the rain fell on his hands, the warmth of his mother’s mittens and his first snowman in the yard. He is not afraid of novelty. For the sake of a breath of fresh air, he is ready to go a long way, and the joy of creativity for him is not just a metaphor.

SELF- PORTRAIT

The time is the feather fallen from the birds wing.

Coming to this world, I did many good things,

but also I made many mistakes.

Hemra Shirov was born on September 1, 1950 in the village of Beshir, Hojambaz district of Lebap region. According to his mother, it snowed on the day he was born, but it quickly melted. Can you imagine snow in early September?! This doesn’t happen often, although the birth of talented writers is also very rare. That day, the father was busy and could not get to the village council, which was located in a remote place, to register the birth of his son, so they made an appointment for September 2. His father Shir Veliyev was a school history teacher and an excellent worker in Public Education. He went through the entire Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 and even fought on the eastern front with the Japanese. He was repeatedly awarded medals and orders and returned home with the rank of captain. By nature, his father was a modest man and never boasted of his awards. Only in 1986, after his death, Hemra was able to see his father’s awards for the first time in his life.

«Out of surprise, I could not utter a word: after all, I didn’t even think that my father had so many awards,” recalls Hemra Shirov.

Since childhood, Hemra was surrounded by books, so reading was one of his favorite pastimes, and since he was also a very creative child, no one was surprised that he began to write poetry. His first works were published in the newspaper for children and youth “Mydam Tayyar” (“Always Ready”) and the magazine “Pioneer” when Hemra was in the fourth grade. School teachers were proud of such a talented student and strongly supported his desire to write poetry. It so happened that the published poems of young Hemra attracted the attention of the poet and writer, his fellow countryman Juma Ilmyradov, who at that time was a consultant in the Lebap region branch of the Writers' Union of Turkmenistan.

Juma Ilmyradov visited the school where Hemra studied to meet the gifted teenager. This visit of the famous poet had a very productive impact on the entire subsequent creative life of Hemra Shirov, because now, starting from the sixth grade, he was constantly invited to the Republican seminar for young writers, which was held in Ashgabat annually. There he met such famous writers and poets as Berdy Kerbabaev, Aman Kekilov, Allaberdy Haidov, Yagmyr Pirgulyev, Mamed Seyidov, and Kakali Berdiev. It was with such a gift of fate that the young poet’s gradual ascent to the Olympus of national literature began, and he did not stop for a minute in his desire to create.

When the time came to choose a suitable specialty, Hemra, without hesitation, chose the Faculty of Native Language and Literature of the Turkmen State University. Here he continued to polish his poetic gift, studying with excellent linguists Dzhumamurad Amansaryev and Mamednazar Hydyrov, lexicologist Kumman Saryev, literary scholars Myati Kosayev, Baimukhamed Karryev, poet Halil Kuliev.

After graduating from university in 1972, he went to serve in the army with the rank of lieutenant. He had a chance to serve in Kamchatka. Life on the peninsula captivated him so much that he dedicated collections of his poems entitled Günüň dogýan ýerine syýahat (“Journey to the place where the Sun rises”) and Wulkanlar ülkesinde (“In the Land of Volcanoes”) to the unique nature of Kamchatka.

Upon returning from the army, he worked as a newspaper reporter, became a member of the Union of Journalists, and in 1978 his first book of children's poems, Jeňňel ýodasy (Path in the Forest), found its readers. He often attended All-Union gatherings and seminars of young writers and playwrights, organized both in Moscow and other cities of the Union. There he meet such famous poets as Sergei Mikhalkov and Agnia Barto, playwrights and writers Eduard Shim, Vladimir Arro and Alexander Shtein.  

At literary seminars, he comes to the attention of prominent poets such as Yegor Isaev, Igor Lyapin and Evgeny Eliseev, who highly appreciated his works. As a result, in 1980 he joined the Writers' Union. Within two years, he published books of children's poems Towşan yzlary ("Hare's Traces") in 1981 and Meni mekdebe ýazyň! (“Sign me up for school!”) in 1982 at the publishing house "Magaryf".

In 1983, the Children's Literature publishing house published a book of children's poems by Hemra Shirov, “Paper Doors,” this time in an excellent translation into Russian by Alla Akhundova. The circulation was 150,000 copies, and Hemra Shirov gained all-Union fame. Subsequently, his poems were translated into many languages ​​of the union republics. They were published both in the most popular children's magazines "Kolobok" and "Malysh", and in such eminent literary magazines as "Neva" and "Yunost". His works were included in various collections and anthologies of Turkmen and world poetry for children.    

In 1984, his poem Akpamygyň kökesi (“Akpamyk’s bread”) won second place in the Republican art competition. In the same year, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Turkmenistan awarded Hemra Shirov a Certificate of Honor for his contribution to the development of national literature. In 1994, he received the Republican Prize named after Hadji Ismailov as the best writer of Turkmenistan writing for children.

At the same time, Hemra Shirov also created prose works that were very much loved by readers. Stories, tales, novels were written by him at the turn of the century in the new genres of romantic fantasy and allegorical story for Turkmen literature. His works “The Adventures of Feather and Daisy”, Men kakam we awtomobil (“Me, Dad and the Car”), Palçykdan ýasalan möjek (“Clay Wolf”), Itleriň durmuşy (“Dog’s Life”), Mekdep jaňy, direkor we beýlekiler (“ School bell, director and others”), Höwürge (“Nest”) became a new word in national literature. Prose miniatures Puryja, Durmuşyň manysy, Belende Galyş and others brought us closer to the problems of our time - tell us precisely about the main things in our life.   

The talented writer is also known as a prolific playwright. He created such musical and dramatic plays as “Youth of Ker-ogly”, “Beset and Depegoz”, “Jelaleddin”, “Hunger Striker”, “Meilis” and “Stepmother”; children's musical fairy tales “Akpamyk and the Devs”, “The Witch’s Aching Tooth”, “The Proud Cockerel”, “The Claw of the Dead Dev”, “The Lazy Frog” and others. His play “Don’t Give In to Despair,” translated into Russian by Eduard Bobrov, was published as a separate book in Moscow.

Hemra Shirov is a writer with a wide creative potential; therefore, not forgetting about the children audience, he also creates works for adults. These are books of his poems “Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow”, “Bow Down to Love”, “Literary Experiments”, “One Hundred Stories”, “Talking to the Sun”, “The Fate of the Fathers”, “Birthplace”, “Abeskun Island”, “Fork in the Road”,  and “In Search of the White Falcon”.  

Back in the early nineties, Hemra Shirov became interested in visual versification, an unusual poetic genre. His works of figured verses “Pähim basganjaklary” (Levels of Understanding), “Awtoportret” (Self-Portrait), “Gar adam” (Snowman), “Horaz süýji” (Lollipop Cockrel) and many others are something that has not yet been seen in the traditional genre of Turkmen poetry. Visual verse is a very diverse artistic phenomenon that is at the intersection of poetry, graphics and painting. They tried to write in this genre back in antiquity. It attracted particular interest from poets in the 17th century, for example, the poem “Blessing” by Simeon of Polotsk in the shape of a heart. G. Apollinaire and Theodore Gautier especially loved this genre. The graphic forms of Hemra Shirov’s poems are supported by cheerful or philosophical content, but even in the most lightweight and entertaining works, one can read the author’s serious attitude towards certain phenomena of life and creativity.

His literary experiments in this direction were warmly received by literary critics in Germany. It so happened that visiting German specialists held a seminar at the Turkmen State University on unusual forms of versification. When it came to graphic poetry, one of the specialists began to talk about the German modernist Kurt Schwitters, who, although no longer alive, found many fans and successors of this genre. Then one of the Turkmen philologist teachers took the floor, saying that there is also a poet in Turkmenistan who is actively working in this direction, moreover, he is alive and well. The surprise and delight of the German specialists knew no bounds. It was with great pleasure that they became acquainted with the Turkmen poet and his modernist works. Already in 2000, at the International Exhibition EXPO 2000 in Munich, posters with graphic poetry by Hemra Shirov decorated the “New Searches” pavilion, dedicated to literature. And some time later, in Cologne, German), the book project “Anna” was released, which I would like to talk about in more details. The collection "Anna" is a book of one poem by Kurt Schwitters "Anna Bloome", in 157 poetic translations of modernist poets from 137 countries. The uniqueness of the book lies in the fact that all the translations are published in the original design, namely as they were written by the poets - most of them by hand, and in the fact that the collection is accompanied by a CD with the voices of the poets reading the translations of "Anna Bloom" in native language. So, among the 157 modernist poets in the collection we can find the name and voice of Hemra Shirov and his magnificent translation of “Anna Bloome” into the Turkmen language.  

A page from literary project “Anna Blume” with translation of poem “Anna Blume” by Kurt Schwitters to Turkmen by Hemra Shirov

His fascination with the unusual poetic genre grew into a serious literary interest. In 1992, his extensive literary study “Poetry Workshop” appeared where he attempted to classify various forms of visual versification. At the dawn of the new 21st century, the author set himself the goal of enriching Turkmen literature with new genres and trends. In 1993, in the children's library named after. B. Amamnov organized an exhibition of his visual poetic works called “Literary Sacraments”, which attracted great public interest. Now he continues to compose in the styles of modernism and surrealism.

Hemra Shirov speaks a lot to young people - future journalists, writers, poets and playwrights; his literary essays often appear in the periodicals Medeniýet and Garagum. Meanwhile, sharing his experience and explaining the laws of creativity, he is skeptical that literary talent can be learnt and taught.

“Life sets very serious universal tasks for a writer, one of which is to help people look deeper into certain phenomena, look at things from a different angle, free themselves from stereotypes,” Hemra Shirov shared his thoughts. - In this, each author must be unique - after all, creativity itself is a very subtle and fragile process. Beginning writers do not need to seek to learn how to write from someone, just as professionals do not need to seek someone to pass on their skill of creating a work of art. This destroys the idea of ​​uniqueness and reduces the creative process to a craft level. If you have talent, it will definitely spill out, but everyone must be able to find ways to express it. Through practice, you can learn to think, observe, use the resources of nature and your own inspiration, and you can learn to write only by reading a lot, analyzing and experimenting».

The writer is convinced that during the creation of a real work of literature or art, a portal opens into a world filled with images and feelings - a source of inspiration, strength and energy. But you cannot abuse it, because the author, using this extraordinary energy, processes it and gives it back to the world. And the main thing here is to know your strength, otherwise you can completely drive yourself away. The writer assigns a special role to nature in his professional activities. He is sure that it contributes to the accumulation of positive energy, which is so necessary in writing.

 «The creative process does not tolerate baseness and meanness; all negative actions committed by us are reflected on it. Therefore, you need to sit down at your desk with an open heart, pure and bright thoughts,” Shirov is convinced.

This is the writer’s opinion, and this is his attitude to life - honest, open and bright. His works are distinguished by ease of style and subtle humor, for the writer avoids floridity in words, expresses thoughts simply but succinctly. It is not a coincidence that Gurban Gulek, a character in several of his works, is the author’s favorite. This cheerful and simple person always jokes, never loses heart and loves life. Such is Hemra Shirov himself, and the world that he creates - optimistic, life-affirming and fair.

Maral Hydyrova,

Journalist, laureate of international literary competitions

Translated from Russian by Serdar Shirov