Lucid Dreams and Wanted Nightmares by Erem Sahintepe - REVIEW

Some books are written to be read. Others feel as though they were written because silence was no longer survivable.

Lucid Dreams and Wanted Nightmares belongs unmistakably to the latter.

From the very first pages, Erem Sahintepe does not ease the reader in — he opens a door and leaves it ajar, inviting (or perhaps daring) you to step into a mind that is already mid-storm. This is not poetry that observes emotion from a safe distance. It inhabits it. Breathes it. At times, it feels as though the poems are less crafted than released.

Structured across three distinct sections, the collection traces a psychological and emotional arc that many will recognise, even if they have never been able to articulate it themselves: the distortion of thought under pressure, the fragile beginnings of resistance, and the uneasy, non-linear nature of healing. The movement from darkness to light is not clean or triumphant — it falters, circles back, questions itself. And that, perhaps, is what makes it feel true.

As a therapist, I found myself reading this collection with a particular kind of attention — the kind reserved for what is not usually said out loud. Because if there is one thing that becomes immediately apparent in these poems, it is just how much is happening internally.

Particularly in men.

In clinical spaces, this is something that surfaces again and again: the depth, complexity, and often overwhelming emotional landscape that exists beneath a surface that has been trained — culturally, socially, almost reflexively — to remain composed. Where women have, historically at least, been granted some permission to express vulnerability, men are still often navigating an unspoken contract: endure, contain, move on.

Sahintepe quietly dismantles that contract.

Throughout the collection, there is a recurring tension between what is felt and what is allowed to be shown. The poems return, again and again, to the idea of concealment — masks, mirrors, guarded expressions — and the exhausting effort required to maintain them. There is a sense that the real battle is not only with anxiety or depression, but with the necessity of hiding them.

And when that concealment fractures, even briefly, the result is striking.

The imagery is vivid, often relentless. Depression is not abstract here; it is personified, persistent, at times almost intimate. Anxiety is not a fleeting state but an occupying force. The internal world is rendered as landscapes — collapsing, burning, freezing — giving shape to experiences that are otherwise difficult to define. These are not decorative metaphors; they feel functional, as though they are the only available language for something that resists direct expression.

There are moments in this collection that feel almost intrusive to read — not because they overstep, but because they are so unguarded. Like overhearing a conversation someone never intended to have publicly. That rawness will not be comfortable for every reader, nor should it be. This is not a collection that softens its edges to be more palatable.

And yet, it is precisely this refusal to dilute the experience that gives the book its quiet power.

What prevents the collection from collapsing under its own intensity is the presence of something else — something less obvious, but persistent. Not optimism in the conventional sense, but a kind of defiance. A refusal to let the narrative end in the darkest place it reaches.

As the collection progresses, subtle shifts begin to emerge. The imagery evolves. Where earlier poems feel enclosed, suffocating, later pieces begin to introduce space — however tentative. Light appears, not as a solution, but as a possibility. Healing is not presented as a destination, nor even as a steady trajectory, but as something fragile, revisited, and at times uncertain.

This is where the structure of the book becomes particularly effective. The movement through the three sections mirrors the lived reality of many mental health journeys: the recognition of struggle, the attempt to confront it, and the ongoing negotiation with what remains. The idea of “rebirth” is present, but it is handled with restraint — not as a grand transformation, but as something quieter, more conditional.

There is also an undercurrent in this collection that feels particularly relevant — and perhaps particularly necessary. Sahintepe’s work does not simply explore mental health; it challenges the silence around men’s mental health. Without becoming overtly instructional or ideological, the poems collectively push against the idea that vulnerability is weakness, or that emotional expression must be contained.

In that sense, this book does more than document an internal experience — it creates space.

Space for conversations that are often avoided. Space for recognition, for those who may see themselves reflected in these pages. And perhaps most importantly, space for the possibility that articulation — however imperfect — is a form of resistance.

This is not a comfortable read. Nor is it meant to be.

But it is a necessary one.

Lucid Dreams and Wanted Nightmares does not offer solutions, and it does not attempt to resolve the tensions it exposes. What it does instead is something far rarer: it gives language to experiences that are often lived in silence, and in doing so, it quietly challenges that silence to loosen its grip and let’s the light in.

And for some readers, perhaps especially those who have never quite found the words themselves, that may be where its true value lies.