George Messo lives in Saudi Arabia with his wife, Semra, and their son, Bashaar. A poet, editor and teacher, he is also a prominent translator of Turkish poetry. His first collection in English, From the Pine Observatory, appeared from Halfacrown Press in 2000, with a second edition from Near East Review Books a year later. His second and third collections were published by Shearsman. His edition of the Selected Poems of the Turkish poet Ilhan Berk appeared from Salt Publishing in 2007, and his own work was represented in the Stride anthology The Allotment: New Lyric Poets, ed. Andy Brown (2006). Shearsman published a further Ilhan Berk volume in 2008, as well as his groundbreaking anthology, Ikinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde in late 2009.