George Messo

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George Messo (born April 10, 1969) is an expatriate English poet^[1] and translator^[2] who was born in rural Lincolnshire, near the town of Barton-Upon-Humber. He moved to Trabzon, Turkey, in 1998 and has since lived in Oman and Saudi Arabia. He was the editor of Near East Review from 2001 to 2007. Messo is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Poetry[edit]

Messo's poetry collections are From the Pine Observatory (2000), Entrances (2006), Hearing Still (2009) and Violades & Appledown (2012). He appeared in the 2006 Stride anthology, The Allotment: New Lyric Poets, edited by Andy Brown.

The Economist has associated Messo with the so-called Istanbul School,^[3] which includes the English poet and travel writer John Ash.

Translation[edit]

Messo is a prominent translator of Turkish poetry. He was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for European poetry translation^[4] in 2007 for his versions of İlhan Berk, A Leaf about to Fall: Selected Poems (2006) and again in 2011 for İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009). Other books include both İlhan Berk's Madrigals^[5] (2008) and poetic trilogy, The Book of Things (2009), two major anthologies İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009) and From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets (2010), as well as Gonca Özmen's The Sea Within (2011) and Birhan Keskin's & Silk & Love & Flame (2013). Messo is the editor of the Turkish Modern Poets Series for Red Hand Books, and the editor of the bi-lingual journal Turkish Poetry Today.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Doing the Translocal: on George Messo's Entrances by Alistair Noon
• Author profile Archived 2008-09-07 at the Wayback Machine at Shearsman Books