Birhan Keskin’s poetry is finely-honed, powerful in its visuals, evocative and exact. Fluid and elusive, her poems explore the space between understanding and remembering, testimony and invention.
This book selects work from six of Keskin’s books, including her prize-winning collection Ba, and George Messo’s outstanding translation enables us to appreciate to the full the work of this exceptional poet. Introduced by Bloodaxe poet and playwright Amanda Dalton.
Birhan Keskin was born in Kırklareli, Turkey, in 1963. Her first poems began to appear in 1984. She has published seven collections of poetry in Turkish, including Ba, which won Turkey’s prestigious Golden Orange Award in 2005.
George Messo is a poet, translator, and editor. His translation of Ilhan Berk’s A Leaf About to Fall: Selected Poems (Salt, 2006) was shortlisted for the Popescu European Translation Prize in 2006. His translations of Keskin’s poetry have already appeared in Shearsman.
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