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Out 1 November 2025 ✨ Two Hundred Million Musketeers by @enderbaskan.

In this debut poetry collection, the winner of the 2021 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize explores the complexities of new parenthood and family life, and anxieties about the future his children will grow up in.

As Başkan writes in his author note, ‘I returned to writing poems when our first child was learning to talk. Language, sounds and words were fun again. We sung each other to sleep. Mumbo jumbo and jibber-jabber filled our home. I’d published a novel and thought the best bits were where I was riffing like that – freewheeling. I found joy transgressing language codes and rules, writing dadaist postcards and letters and leaving madcap voice messages for my friends. Elegant long sentences were eluding me. We were being broken open. I was not making sense, common sense, but I was connecting to some sensibility that felt true to me. The child’s world away from the tyranny of capitalist logic.’

Praise for the book:

‘Ender Başkan is on a roll: behold the flows of this supercollider brain and heart, imparting particles (poetic lines) with immense energy, accelerating language into an extreme and vast sequence of intimacy – the vastness of work life, art life, and life life, and life, and life, held high.’
– Lucy Van

‘Ender is aware of all that looms around about him – yet anchored in the daily grind of family and the domestic environment, and his job, and a troubled heart and conscience, and the art and poetics of the complexity of language – he slides across the floor with a fabulous smile and presence.’
– π.O. (Pi.O.)

Learn more and pre-order Two Hundred Million Musketeers on our website.

Dear friends and fellow travellers
Over the past four or five years, amongst the hum and mess of life, I’ve written the poems that have now become a book called Two Hundred Million Musketeers.
A few days ago some author copies came my way from my publisher @giramondopublishing and the whole caper became real.
You may have read some of the poems already, as they’ve been published here and there, but most are new. You can read a bit about them at the Giramondo website.Please join me and Lucy Van @busey____ in conversation at @readingsbooks Carlton at 6pm on Wednesday 5/11/25 for the Melbourne Launch. Ender xx

Dear friends and fellow travellers
Over the past four or five years, amongst the hum and mess of life, I’ve written the poems that have now become a book called Two Hundred Million Musketeers.
A few days ago some author copies came my way from my publisher @giramondopublishing and the whole caper became real.
You may have read some of the poems already, as they’ve been published here and there, but most are new. You can read a bit about them at the Giramondo website.Please join me and Lucy Van @busey____ in conversation at @readingsbooks Carlton at 6pm on Wednesday 5/11/25 for the Melbourne Launch. Ender xx

Dear friends and fellow travellers
Over the past four or five years, amongst the hum and mess of life, I’ve written the poems that have now become a book called Two Hundred Million Musketeers.
A few days ago some author copies came my way from my publisher @giramondopublishing and the whole caper became real.
You may have read some of the poems already, as they’ve been published here and there, but most are new. You can read a bit about them at the Giramondo website.Please join me and Lucy Van @busey____ in conversation at @readingsbooks Carlton at 6pm on Wednesday 5/11/25 for the Melbourne Launch. Ender xx

Dear friends and fellow travellers
Over the past four or five years, amongst the hum and mess of life, I’ve written the poems that have now become a book called Two Hundred Million Musketeers.
A few days ago some author copies came my way from my publisher @giramondopublishing and the whole caper became real.
You may have read some of the poems already, as they’ve been published here and there, but most are new. You can read a bit about them at the Giramondo website.Please join me and Lucy Van @busey____ in conversation at @readingsbooks Carlton at 6pm on Wednesday 5/11/25 for the Melbourne Launch. Ender xx

Join us for an evening of solidarity and shared purpose. Activist, author and linguistics scholar Nick Riemer will be in conversation with co-editors Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk, with readings from award-winning poets Micaela Sahhar and Ender Başkan.

April 29, 5:30pm-late. Solidarity Hall at Trades Hall, Carlton.

Capacity is limited, so please RSVP via the link in our bio. This event is pay-as-you-wish - no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

See you there.

Supported by the City of Melbourne.

Join us for an evening of solidarity and shared purpose. Activist, author and linguistics scholar Nick Riemer will be in conversation with co-editors Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk, with readings from award-winning poets Micaela Sahhar and Ender Başkan.

April 29, 5:30pm-late. Solidarity Hall at Trades Hall, Carlton.

Capacity is limited, so please RSVP via the link in our bio. This event is pay-as-you-wish - no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

See you there.

Supported by the City of Melbourne.

Feels very touching to have folks spend time with and review ‘musketeers… thanks to @brian.obiri.asare for this one with @mascarareview xx

Feels very touching to have folks spend time with and review ‘musketeers… thanks to @brian.obiri.asare for this one with @mascarareview xx

Feels very touching to have folks spend time with and review ‘musketeers… thanks to @brian.obiri.asare for this one with @mascarareview xx

My dear friend @abbra_czyk and I interviewed one another for @corditepublishing - chatting about poetry, parenting, underwater worlds, knives, waking up, ritournellos and serious play … go to Cordite website for the goods… ‘to be a child is to be human’ xx

My dear friend @abbra_czyk and I interviewed one another for @corditepublishing - chatting about poetry, parenting, underwater worlds, knives, waking up, ritournellos and serious play … go to Cordite website for the goods… ‘to be a child is to be human’ xx

Introducing @enderbaskan - the people’s poet. Ender is a writer & small-press publisher living in Naarm/Melbourne.

Ender published his first novel, A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man in 2019, which Zoltan recently devoured with more enthusiasm than he’d had for a novel in a very long time.

His 2025 collection of poetry, Two Hundred Million Musketeers, explores the complexities of new parenthood and reflects Ender’s awareness of the small rituals, trains of thought and passing snapshots of his new family’s world. It has been shortlisted for this year’s Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.

In our podcast interview, we talk about how he developed his writing style, the way parenthood brought him back to writing poetry and the importance of being present and capturing ideas immediately.

The word that came up repeatedly throughout our chat was collectivity, which means everything to Ender. He comes from a collectivist culture and is striving to humbly create that, not only with and for his family, but his wider community.

Find What Artists Eat wherever you listen to podcasts.

#artpodcast #poetry

Congratulations to @enderbaskan, whose debut collection Two Hundred Million Musketeers has been shortlisted for the #VPLAs2026 for Poetry! 🎉 Write the judges:

‘Two Hundred Million Musketeers is a compelling debut which weaves the idiosyncrasies of the world into its pages. Başkan’s poetics are lively and utterly ungovernable, in his refusal to bend to the idea of what a poetry collection should be. Başkan’s spirited stream-of-consciousness invites the reader into the family of this collection, by drawing from the imaginative language of children, the peculiarities of waged labour and the return to his ancestral home of Turkey. The lived world, with its clamour and complexity, spills out of the book in unexpected ways. ’

Eunice Andrada is also a poetry finalist for her latest collection KONTRA, with Lee Lai shortlisted for Fiction for her graphic novel, Cannon.

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Our next comrade reading at Big Verse: The Readings Poetry Gala is Ender Başkan, whose debut collection of poetry ‘Two Hundred Million Musketeers’ was released only yesterday to an absolutely packed house of poetry punters.

Ender Başkan is a Melbourne-based poet, novelist, small-press publisher and bookseller. The winner of the 2021 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, his poems have been published in HEAT, Meanjin, Cordite, Unusual Work and Best of Australian Poems. He has also published a novel, A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man. He is the co-founder of Vre Books press, Agog poetry readings and Study, an experimental space.

Tickets are selling quickly. Grab yours via bio or this link: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1469454

See you there!

Today is the official launch day of Two Hundred Million Musketeers my collection of poems published by @giramondopublishing 🎈Here’s a list of events I’ll be part of this month, sharing the stage with many many incredible poets and writers… Note: there’s also the Nov 30 @kalliopex fundraiser which will be 🔥

Two Hundred Million Musketeers comes out November 1 with @giramondopublishing - link in bio

This Sunday!