Poet, translator and essayist, Murat Nemet-Nejat was born in Istanbul and graduated from Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey. He studied literature at Amherst College and Columbia University in the United States. Married with two children, he has lived in the United States since 1959.
Murat Nemet-Nejat is the editor of Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry (Jersey City: Talisman House, 2004). His books of translations also include Ece Ayhan,'s Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1997) and Orhan Veli's I, Orhan Veli (New York: Hanging Loose Press, 1989). His essays and collaborative works include Possibilities of Istanbul (a visual and textual approach), Nina Reisinger, Austria, 2006; "Eleven Septembers Later: Readings of Benjamin Hollander's Vigilance," Beyond Baroque Books, 2005; "Frédéric Brenner. Diaspora: homelands in exile, voices" (essays), HarperCollins Publishers, 2003; "The Peripheral Space of Photography," Green Integer Press, 2003; "Questions of Accent," The Exquisite Corpse, 1993. His poetry includes "I Did My Best Work During a Writer's Block," First Intensity, 2008; "Rooster Street," Both Both, 2006; "Steps," Mirage, 2003; "A 13th Century Dream," Cipher Journal, 2002, http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/13th_century_dream.html; Aishe Series and Other Harbor Poems, 2001; Io's Song, 1998; Turkish Voices, The World, 1992; The Bridge. London: Martin Brian & O'Keeffe, Ltd., 1977. He is presently working on the translation of Seyhan Erozçelik's Rose Strikes and Coffee Grinds (Gül ve Telve), which will be published by Talisman House in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 2009, and his long poem Structure of Escape, to be completed in 2009.