Derick Mattern translates contemporary poetry from Turkish and studies long poems in the context of world literature.
Derick Mattern studies and translates poetry written in Turkish. Winner of the British Council Young Translator Prize, he has translated work by Haydar Ergülen, Şükrü Erbaş, Cenk Gündoğdu, and Yücel Kayıran. His work on behalf of contemporary Turkish poetry has been supported by the British Centre for Literary Translation, Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Raised in (what was formerly called) Zaire, Nigeria, and Kenya, he taught English after college in Seoul, Tokyo, and Istanbul, before returning the US for further study. Since coming to Washington University in St Louis, he has twice served as a summer fellow at the Humanities Digital Workshop, and as an assistant instructor in classes on World Literature, Modern Near Eastern Literature, Digital Humanities, and Global Studies. He currently assists with the Washington University Translators Collective reading/writing group at the Center for the Humanities and co-teaches the Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellows seminar. His hybrid dissertation focuses on the genre of the long poem and its travels through translation, Turkish poetics, and world literature, alongside a critical translation of Kayıran’s Efsus’a Yolculuk.