Tursun Ali

Tursun Ali (born Urmonov) was born on 5 February 1952 in the village of Toshyo'li in the Quva District of the Fergana Region. He finished eighth grade in 1968 and an evening school for working youth in Tashkent in 1971, and in 1981 he graduated from the philology faculty of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan).

His first poems appeared in the miscellanies “Yoshlik bayozi” and “Yoshlik”. His first book, “The Green Voice”, came out in 1979, followed by the collections “Words in the Heart” (1983), “The Threshold of Anguish” (1983), “Bright Days” (1986), “The Voice of the Night” (1993), “My Only One” (1995) and “Awakened Silence” (1999). A volume of selected poems, “The Colour of Feelings”, appeared in 2001, then “A Silent Scream” (2005), “Moon Leaf” (2008) and “The Blossoming Heart” (2009).

He began his working life as a proofreader at the newspaper “O'zbekiston madaniyati” (later “O'zbekiston adabiyoti va sanʼati”). He later held various posts at the Ghafur Ghulam Publishing House of Literature and Art, at the Cholpon and Adolat publishing houses and on the staff of the newspaper “O'zbekiston ovozi”. In 2011 he was a literary adviser at the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan.

Tursun Ali is also a translator: he has rendered Chinese and Japanese poetry and the work of Russian poets into Uzbek, and in one interview his translations of Ivan Bunin and Osip Mandelstam are mentioned. Cycles of his poems were printed in the Moscow magazine “Smena” and in the almanac “Granat” (in Russian), a collection of his poems was published in Azerbaijan in Azerbaijani, and his verse has been translated into English, Tajik and Karakalpak.

In 2008 he was awarded the Order of Friendship (“Do'stlik”). He lives in Tashkent.