Vedi AŞKAROĞLU

People's livelihood matters have always been an integral part of literary production in almost all eras. Human beings, who have to find out the meaning of their existence, attempt to recognise themselves and make their existence meaningful by getting to know the conditions and happenings around them. II. Yeni Poetry presents the tragic of city people, who are forced to a new attempt to find out the meaning of life in the face of modernisation. In his early poems, İlhan Berk focuses upon the depiction people, who become alienated in the face of economic hardships in the cities, through the portrayal of workers, women, young girls and children. People from lower economic scale are depicted as unhappy, hopeless, depressed and alienated in his early poems. In this article, how the themes of depression and estrangement are felt by the individual in İlhan Berk’s early poems, focusing on the effects of modernity, will be examined and analyzed.

Keywords: İlhan Berk, Early Period Poems, Modernisation, Individual, Depression, Alienation.