How Many Oaths Have Been Taken About Me? (Book)

How Many Oaths Have Been Taken About Me? is the first poetry collection by Mert Mevlüt Gökçe. Published in October 2022 by Dergâh Yayınları as part of its Turkish Literature series, it is a 64-page work. This debut collection by Gökçe is built around experiences of youth and the identification of an individual voice.

The work begins with the poem that gives it its title and explores themes of nature, belonging, memory, individual alienation, and symbolic attachments.

• Nature and Human Relationship: A sense of identification with nature and the burdens it entails is felt in lines such as “I take on the blame of the wind / it taught me to go to the leaves.”
• Belonging and Alienation: Expressions like “Grandmother in your garden” convey connections with family and roots; this attention carries both warmth and distance.
• Conscious Difference: Lines such as “They commit suicide by not resembling their peers / I resign most thoroughly from my civil service” highlight individuality, detachment from society, or nonconformity.
• Silence and Conflict of Belief: The line “They believe unconditionally in God” underscores the distance between faith and personal stance.
• Emotional Transfer: The phrase “at a decibel even angels cannot hear” aims to convey a compositional emotion through words.

Gökçe’s language relies on short and intense poetic structures, foregrounding the experiential, archetypal, and symbolic. Syntax is straightforward and imagery remains consistent. The poems are embroidered with modern sensibility, simultaneously carrying layers of personal emotion and a sense of collective consciousness.