Translations from Turkish

Published 2008. Paperback, 104 pp, 8x5ins, £10.95 / $18

ISBN 9781905700738 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Madrigals is a collection of poems by Turkey's leading experimental poet, an 89-year-old still at the height of his powers. With spare texts, sometimes with only a few words to a page, this collection has a powerful meditative quality, even as the words trail away into silence and the whiteness of the page.

Published 2016. Paperback, 336pp, 9.21 x 6.14ins, £14.95 / $24

ISBN 9781848614628 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Unparalleled in the English language, The Book of Things, Berk's uniquely compelling lyric trilogy, is an uncommon meditation on the inner life of common things. Mud, bras, slugs and doors – Berk sings them all in this twisting, labyrinthine song of the strange and sensual, by turns playful and surprising, learned and hilarious, beautiful and unsettling in its quirkiness.

      Berk's tireless journey into the unknown, The Book of Things is a testament to the poet's undying appetite for engagement and renewal, his perennial call to awakening.

Published 2016. Paperback, 200pp, 9 x 6ins, £14.95 / $23

ISBN 9781848614611 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

Ilhan Berk (1908-2008) has been called a literary Midas: everything he touched turned to poems. New Selected Poems shows us the full linguistic range and imaginative power of Turkey’s greatest experimental poet. With a large selection of poems drawn from over 60 years of work, New Selected Poems offers a unique and indispensable portal into the world of Ilhan Berk. Berk’s poems quiver and spark with a language always pressing out against its own skin: sensual, erotic, strange and intimate, relaxed and humorous; poems in which smells, tastes, sights, sounds, and touch become the preludes for a reawakening of history, the body, the very world around us. If Berk himself was concerned with re-engaging a lost sensory world, then for many this volume will be a journey of discovery.

Published 2009. Paperback, 168pp, 9x6ins, £14.95 / $23.00

ISBN 9781848610668 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

 

In the mid-1950s a small but energetic group of young Turkish poets exploded into creative life. Their vivid, cosmopolitan experimentalism sent shock waves through the literary establishment. They became known as the Ikinci Yeni (The Second New). Inspired by surrealism and the contemporary European avant-garde, their influence was widespread and lasting — Turkish poetry would never be the same again.

      In this unique anthology George Messo introduces broad selections from five of the leading Ikinci Yeni poets: Ece Ayhan, Ilhan Berk, Edip Cansever, Cemal Süreya and Turgut Uyar.

Published 2011. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £10.95 / $18.

SBN 9781848611481 [Download a sample PDF from this book here.]

 

In just two short books, Gonca Özmen's startling and arresting poems have earned her an unprecedented reputation in Turkey. Her mysterious, dream-like imagery and her fresh, restless approach to language mark her as a poet of rare ambition and intelligence. In poems whose power to mourn and remember love, to celebrate and reinvent the sensuous appetites of the body, enacts a subtle, exacting beauty, Özmen's is a voice and spirit to be welcomed.