George Messo
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
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
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
- ↑ http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/authors/messoA.html
- ↑ http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smpt/1844712745.htm
- ↑ ‘Poetic inspiration’, The Economist, February 15, 2007. Reprinted at http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=103238
- ↑ http://www.literarytranslation.com/news/popescuprize2007/
- ↑ http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/freeverse/Archives/Spring_2008/reviews/J_Thompson.html
External links
- Doing the Translocal: on George Messo's Entrances by Alistair Noon
- Author profile at Shearsman Books