Messo's poetry collections are From the Pine Observatory (2000), Entrances (2006), Hearing Still (2009) and Violades & Appledown (2012).
He appeared in the 2006 Stride anthology, The Allotment: New Lyric Poets, edited by Andy Brown.
The Economist has associated Messo with the so-called Istanbul School,[3] which includes the English poet and travel writer John Ash.
He was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for European poetry translation[4] in 2007 for his versions of İlhan Berk, A Leaf about to Fall: Selected Poems (2006) and again in 2011 for İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009).
Other books include both İlhan Berk's Madrigals[5] (2008) and poetic trilogy, The Book of Things (2009), two major anthologies İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009) and From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets (2010), as well as Gonca Özmen's The Sea Within (2011) and Birhan Keskin's & Silk & Love & Flame (2013).