İlhan Sami Çomak is the recipient of the 2025 Jack Hirschman Poetry Prize, an international award honouring writers whose work reflects ideals of justice, peace and human dignity. The news came months after his release from prison in Istanbul in November 2024.

İlhan was a twenty-two year old geography student when arrested and charged with lighting a fire in a forest and alleged links to the banned Kurdish Workers Party. There was little evidence to support the charges but İlhan confessed under torture. He has always subsequently denied the charges. He began to write poetry in prison and became the subject of the international Free the Poet campaign run by Norwegian PEN. During his thirty year incarceration he published eight collections of poetry in Turkish, a prize-winning play and a best-selling autobiography. In 2018, Çomak won the Sennur Sezer poetry prize for his 8th book of poems, Geldim Sana (I Came to You) He was awarded the Norwegian Writers ’Union’s Freedom of Expression Prize in 2022. In 2022 Smokestack Books published his first poetry book in English, Separated From The Sun, edited by Caroline Stockford.

İlhan will be in Belfast at the invitation of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann and will be accompanied by his “McKenzie” friend, İpek Özel and members of Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann for an informal discussion and to read some poems.