Postcard from Bishkek

The Kyrgyz poet Esengul Ibraev was born into a farming family in the village of Chet Nur, in the Naryn oblast,  on 16th March 1934.  He died on 5th August, 2005, but had he lived, then yesterday would have been his eightieth birthday.

A new book has been published to commemorate the anniversary.

Ibraev graduated from the Naryn Teachers’ Training College in 1952 and began working in the youth movement in the Kochkor district, rising quickly in the hierarchy to a managerial position.

His first collection of poems, Bobogym, (My Little Brother), was published in 1954.  It was written in Kyrgyz and a Russian translation appeared in 1964.  Later, he also had individual poems published in Poland and Germany.

In 1961, he graduated from a course at the Department of Journalism at the Kyrgyz State University and began working on the magazine Chelkan, once again rising through the hierarchy eventually becoming the editor.

He joined the Journalists’ Union of the Soviet Union in 1962, and although the declared aim of the organization was “to promote the active participation of journalists in the building of communism, to help increase their ideological and theoretical level and professional skill”, he didn’t actually become a member of the Communist Party until 1968.  He also joined the Writer’s Union in 1970.

In 1986 he also started the children’s magazine Baichechkei.  He also wrote a poems for children including retelling fairy tales.

Among the awards he was given were the Diploma of the Supreme Soviet of the Kyrgyz SSR, several diplomas from the Central Committee of Komsomol and an award from WIPO, (The World Intellectual Property Organization – one of the seventeen specialist agencies of the United Nations), – “in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of poetry“.

In Bishkek, a street was renamed in his honour in March 2010.

 

 

 

 

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