New selected poems, 1947-2008 by İlhan Berk and translated by George Messo

This is poetry from Turkey.

New selected poems, 1947-2008 by İlhan Berk translated by George Messo is published by Shearsman Books. This is a Selected originally written in Turkish. This was published in 2016.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781848614611E12.

İlhan Berk’s New selected poems, 1947-2008, translated by George Messo, gives English-language readers a long view of one of Turkish poetry’s major modern voices. A selected poems is not simply a sampler. At its best, it lets a reader witness a mind changing shape over decades, returning to obsessions, abandoning others, finding new formal weather. Berk’s work belongs to modern Turkish poetry’s experimental and restless energies, where the city, the body, history, image, and surreal attention keep remaking each other. Messo’s translations make the long arc available without asking the reader to become an expert first. Start with the images, the strangeness, the feeling that language is trying to outpace itself.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.