The Uyghur PEN Center held its official election on April 16, 2025, at the Mir Publishing House office in Almaty, Kazakhstan. In addition to local members attending in person, participants from around the world joined the event online. A total of 24 members took part in the meeting.
The session was chaired by Alisher Khalilov, head of the Executive Committee of the Uyghur PEN Center. Former president and artist Kaiser Ozhun opened the event with a report detailing the founding history of the Uyghur PEN Center and highlighting the accomplishments achieved during his tenure.
Aziz Isa Elkun, UK-based exiled Uyghur poet in his London garden with a three year old apricot tree he has nurtured from a sapling to remind him of home.
One of my strongest childhood memories was following my father around our family orchard and closely watching him as he tended the trees. I helped him plant apricots from the age of six or seven. Our family owned a large tract of land in Xinjiang (also known as East Turkestan) north of the Tarim River, (south of Shayar County), the principal water source of the Tarim Basin that sweeps from the Karakoram Mountains in the West across the northern edge of the Taklimakan Desert to Lop Nur in the East.
My father had set his heart on growing a family orchard. I remember there being no water for the small apricot saplings after we planted them and I would follow my father, carrying a little bucket to bring water from the lake in the village to help the apricot and other trees grow.
I learned how to plant, graft, and look after fruit trees. We had one of the largest and most unique orchards in our neighbourhood. Everyone admired my father’s dedication as he struggled to grow fruit trees in the dry desert climate. He collected fruit trees for our garden from far and wide; even as far as Kucha, 65 kilometers to the north, and brought them home to grow. We had fig, pomegranate, apricot, pear, apple, peach, and hundred-meter-long vine trellises.
Edited by Aziz Isa Elkun Translated by Aziz Isa Elkun and others Published: 26/10/2023 EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETS Penguin Random House
An unprecedented collection of poems spanning the rich two-thousand-year cultural legacy of the Uyghur people of Central Asia. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETS.
The Uyghurs have a long and glorious history of poetry, dating from the oral epics of the second century BCE through the elegant love poetry of the medieval period and up to the present moment -and much of it has never before been translated into English. Uyghur poetry reflects the magnificent natural landscapes at the heart of the Silk Road region, with its endless steppes, soaring mountain ranges, and vast deserts, as well as its turbulent history. Turkic, Sufi, and Persian influences have shaped the poetic tradition over the centuries, and more recently the modernism of the twentieth century left its mark as well. In the face of the systematic persecution of the Uyghurs in China today, which has driven many of their poets into exile, including the editor and translator of this volume, Aziz Isa Elkun, who lives in London. Uyghur Poems is not only a remarkable one-volume tour of an ancient and vibrant poetic tradition but also a vital witness to a threatened culture.
