Dinçer Güçyeter

The theater-maker, poet, editor, and publisher Dinçer Güçyeter was born in 1979 in Nettetal, a town in the Lower Rhine region. After training as a mechanic and a temporary stint as a restaurateur, he founded the ELIF publishing house in 2011, which he funded through his part-time work as a forklift driver. Güçyeter publishes regional and international poetry through ELIF. There, in 2012, he also published his poetry collections »Anatolien Blues«) and »Ein Glas Leben« (tr: A Glass of Life) followed by »Aus Glut geschnitzt« (2017; tr: Carved from Embers). The poems of the volume »Mein Prinz, ich bin das Ghetto« (2021; tr: My Prince, I Am the Ghetto) are a quest for the roots of one’s own origin, an exploration of the intricate web of familial bonds, and the opposition to traditionally inherited societal notions and alternative lifestyles. With its variety of settings, geographies, and ways of life, the texts condense into a global meta-text of human existence. Güçyeter was awarded the Peter Huchel Prize in 2022 for this volume. The jury praised Güçyeter’s »expressionist language power and delicate ambivalence towards familial, social, and cultural locations, as well as post-patriarchal possibilities of a sovereign existence […] Sometimes in the gesture of protest, sometimes extremely intimately tuned, a poet of the world reveals himself here and opens up […] a very unique and yet familiar world between the Lower Rhine Nettetal and Anatolia […] and humorously undermines – prevailing post-migrant stereotypes.«

Güçyeter published his first novel, »Unser Deutschlandmärchen« (tr: Our German Fairy Tale), in 2022. Here too, the author sets out in search of the origins of his own existence, language, and home. In his family portrait, the women who shaped his own biography play a particularly special role but also represent the many fates of guest worker families. The novel was awarded with the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in 2023 and the ELIF publishing house with the Kurt Wolff Promotion Prize.

The author lives in Nettetal.

Aus Glut geschnitzt

Elif
Nettetal, 2017

Mein Prinz, ich bin das Ghetto

Elif
Nettetal, 2021

Unser Deutschlandmärchen

mikrotext
Berlin, 2022