Brian Turner, GPC 2010-2011
Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose debut book of
poems, Here, Bullet, a harrowing,
beautiful first-person account of the Iraq war, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley
Award, The New York Times “Editor's
Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award,
and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the US
Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd
Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Of
Here, Bullet, The New York Times Book Review
wrote: “The day of the first moonwalk, my father's college literature professor
told his class, ‘Someday they'll send a poet, and we'll find out what it's
really like.’ Turner has sent back a dispatch from a place arguably more
incomprehensible than the moon—the war in Iraq—and deserves our thanks.”
Turner's poetry has been published in Poetry
Daily, The Georgia
Review, and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in
conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner
was also featured in Operation
Homecoming, a unique documentary that explores the firsthand
accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. He earned an
MFA from the University of Oregon and has lived abroad in South
Korea. Turner was selected as one of 50 United States Artists Fellows for 2009, and his second poetry
book, Phantom Noise,
was released by Alice James in the Spring of 2010.
Additional
Links:
“Eulogy,”
“Najaf 1820,” and “Ashbah.” Npr.com.
Reading
of poems from Here, Bullet. Youtube.com.