I Have Something To Say: Selected Poems
From an engineer on the Emba oil fields to Minister of Energy and Speaker of Parliament — and, throughout, a poet. Izmukhambetov writes with the eye of a man who saw history from the inside yet never lost his feel for the eternal: the wide Zhaiyk river, the ancestral steppe, the soul of his people.
Baktykozha Izmukhambetov
Baktykozha Izmukhambetov is a rare figure in modern Kazakh literature—a statesman of the highest rank and a scholar of international renown who has remained faithful to poetry: that quiet truth born between the lines of official reports, in the pauses between meetings, and in the stillness before dawn.
He was born on September 1, 1948, in a remote village in the Atyrau Region. His life story mirrors the history of Kazakhstan itself—the transformation of an oil-producing frontier into a modern nation. He began at the very bottom, as an assistant driller in the oil fields of Emba, rising to driller, engineer, senior engineer, chief technologist, expedition leader, and general director of major oil companies. His government career advanced in the Ministry of Energy: head of department, head of directorate, first deputy minister, and minister. He later served as akim (governor) of the West Kazakhstan and Atyrau regions, chairman of the Mazhilis (the lower house of Parliament), and now as a member of Parliament for the Amanat party. Each stage of this ascent was not merely a career step but an act of service to his country in the decisive years of its formation.
A graduate of the Ufa State Petroleum Technological University—where he was awarded the institution’s Golden Badge No. 12—Izmukhambetov spent decades building the energy sector of independent Kazakhstan. A doctor of technical sciences, he is the author of five inventions (author’s certificates), five monographs, and more than seventy scientific publications. His work has earned international recognition—one monograph was published in Montreal, Canada, in 1994—and he has represented Kazakhstan on the global stage while leading its largest national companies.
His achievements have been honored with Kazakhstan’s Orders of Kurmet, Parasat, and Otan; Russia’s Order of Friendship of Peoples; and Ukraine’s Order “For Merit.” In 2023 he was awarded the title Hero of Labor of Kazakhstan.
Yet there is another side to Izmukhambetov—the man who grew up in a home filled with the sounds of kyuis played by his mother and with a love of language nurtured by his father, a philologist. This Izmukhambetov never parted with his notebook, where, between meetings and journeys, he would set down lines of poetry. Power did not harden his heart, and high office did not blind him to the simple truths: the beauty of his homeland, the wisdom of his ancestors, the pain and joy of his people.
His poetry has earned him membership in the Writers’ Union of Kazakhstan and has reached far beyond the country’s borders. Collections of his verse have been published in French, Russian, and Azerbaijani, and his works have appeared with the publishing houses of the Writers’ Unions of Turkey, Bashkortostan, and Tatarstan. Yet formal recognition is not the point. In these poems lies the testimony of a man who stood at the helm of history and still preserved what matters most—the ability to marvel, to empathize, to love.
The Zhaiyk River, the boundless steppe, the faces of his fellow countrymen—all live in his verses, not as tourist exotica but as life itself, seen through a poet’s eyes. Now, through translation, English-speaking readers may share in this singular vision of the world, where the eternal shines through the fleeting and the fate of one man reflects the fate of an entire people.