Insprıng Women: Didem Madak

Didem Madak was born on April 8, 1970. The poet, who attended primary school in different cities, lost her mother at the age of 13. Madak started her primary education in Burdur and continued her education in Uşak and Izmir. After completing her primary school years at Uşak Gazi Primary School and her secondary and high school education at Izmir Suphi Koyuncuoğlu High School, she earned a degree in Biology from Ege University. However, after a short time, she froze school and started working in different jobs. Later, she enrolled in Law School this time. But she also dropped out of Law School when she was still a freshman. As her father’s marriage to someone else deepens the loneliness in her soul, she secretly married a teenager from school and ran away from home.
Her husband left school soon after, and because they were broke, she worked in jobs such as surveyor, secretary, clerk. These difficulties she had been experiencing and her mental state led her to poetry after a while. Her marriage, which she did at the age of nineteen, ended four years later. Didem Madak, who has been studying Public Administration for a while, completed her studies at Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Law in 2000, and worked as a trainee lawyer for a while. After separating from her husband, she moved in to a basement apartment in Bornova, where she conducted deep readings on Sufism. It was also during these years that she began writing poetry.
In her poems, she described all the difficulties she experienced in the basement. “They are very good places to write poetry, as long as it is based on humidity,” she says in an interview from the basement. Didem Madak was very lonely during this period. Her sister Işıl said that she was standing by eating only milk and chocolate, that she was not happy with life, that nothing was going the way she wanted.
Didem Madak ran away from her loved ones for three years. Her close friend, Müjde Bilir, described her escape in an interview as follows:
“Didem called me one evening and told me that she missed her mother. I convinced her to get into a taxi and come to my place. She was embarrassed and timid when she arrived. Her longing for maternal affection was deeply evident. ’I’m very unhappy,’ she said. We agreed to meet the next day. However, Didem didn’t show up. When I went to Didem’s house, I found a note attached to the wall. ‘Dear Müjde, Mother Blue, I feel like leaving without saying anything. I love you. Last night’s poem was already written, I’ll just pen it.”
Nothing was not heard from Madak for the next three years. She only went to her sister Işıl occasionally. On one of her trips, she surprised Işıl very much. she came out in hijab,
“I was covered up… Against everything… and I got rid of my female identity. That makes me feel better.”
she said.
Didem Madak was interested in Sufism during this period. Her sister Işıl’s comments about this period are as follows:
“It was very hopeless. she hoped that by covering up, she would find a way out of this situation. My sister survived that period by believing. Or she would have slipped away. She was also able to finish her law school during this period.”
During this period, her sister Işıl mentions the ‘Revolution Bookstore 2000 Poetry Prize’ competition. When Didem Madak was not interested in this, her sister Işıl collected all her poems and sended them to the competition. After a while, the news came that the “Grapon Papers” file has won the competition. In the process, Didem Madak met someone who was a poet and lawyer on the Internet. She met this man, very impressed by the fact that he is a poet. At the end of the day, the young man offered them to write a poem. The guy read his own poem on the second date. Madak, who went to Istanbul for the award ceremony, took off her hijab before the competition. This was a kind of, as she put it, a return to female identity.
Didem Madak, after receiving her award, began to live in Istanbul. After a while, she got married her husband Timur and gave birth to her daughter Füsun 3 years later. After the birth of her daughter, Madak, who could not write poetry, got cancer just like her mother. She died on July 24, 2011, at the age of 41, due to colon cancer.