He later worked as a translator at several embassies and in the Turkish language section five years of the BBC in London.
His major poetry collections include Bir Siyasinin Şiirleri (Poems of a Political Prisoner / 1974), Sevgi Duvarı (Wall of Love / 1973), Ölüm ve Oğlum (Death and My Son / 1976), Gökyokuş (Steep Heaven / 1984), Canfeda (Life Offering / 1988), Çok Bi Çocuk (The Child Colors the Man / 1988), Mekânım Datça Olsun (Let Datça Be My Domicile / 1999) and Rengâhenk (Col'armony / 1991).
In his later years, he settled in the remote peninsular town of Datça in southwestern Turkey, where he died of throat cancer.
The main themes and inspirational sources in his poems are nature, people, events, concepts, excitements, perceptions, and emotions.
Yücel also translated the works of Shakespeare, Lorca and Brecht into Turkish and his creative rendering of these authors are classics in their own right in Turkey.