George Messo


George Messo is an expatriate English poet and translator 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, Entrances, Hearing Still and Violades & Appledown. 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, 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 in 2007 for his versions of İlhan Berk, A Leaf about to Fall: Selected Poems and again in 2011 for İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde. Other books include both İlhan Berk's Madrigals and poetic trilogy, The Book of Things, two major anthologies İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde and From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets, as well as Gonca Özmen's The Sea Within and Birhan Keskin's & Silk & Love & Flame. Messo is the editor of the Turkish Modern Poets Series for , and the editor of the bi-lingual journal .