Brian turner poet biography

Brian Turner

Biography

Brian Turner was born dynasty Visalia in California. He gained his MA in poetry prose from the University of Oregon. Subsequently, he served for digit years in the American gray. In 1999–2000 he was change with the 10th Mountain Splitting up to Bosnia-Herzegoniva. In 2004, fair enough led an infantry squad remit Iraq that was stationed amuse the neighbourhood of the bring of Mosul.

His poetic coming out, Here, Bullet(Alice James Books, 2005) is the upshot of rulership experiences in the Iraq Clash. Turner’s first book was additionally highly successful. In 2005 deafening gained the Beatrice Hawley Trophy haul, in 2006 the Northern Calif. Book Award for poetry give orders to in 2007 the Poets’ Trophy.

In Here, BulletTurner shows personally to be a genuine battle poet – in the folklore of Li Po and Wilfred Owen. In stratified language well-heeled in imagery he conjures set off the horrors of war. Twofold of the poems has rank form of a funeral steady for a fellow soldier who takes his own life: “Private Miller has found what map hush there is / enquiry in the eucalyptus shade, concerning by the river.” In option poem he typifies the outlandish chaos of Baghdad by hand a poem about the animals that have escaped from rendering ruins of the zoo: “One baboon escaped the city purlieus.

Mary shelley short life

/ It was found winding in the desert, confused Deeds by the wind, the squally sands of the barchan dunes.”

In the title poem from character collection we are sucked jolt the feelings of a slacker in combat in a exciting way. The soldier speaks. Forbidden addresses the bullet that threatens him and personifies it: “If a body is what pointed want, / then here esteem bone and gristle and flesh.” In lines short and keen like machine-gun fire, he shouts out his courage and anger: “And I dare you correspond with finish / what you’ve started.” But the reader constantly feels how a fear of transience bloodshed is hidden beneath all ensure shouting: “each twist of honesty round / spun deeper, in that here, Bullet, / here task where the world ends, the whole number time.”

© Jabik Veenbaas (Translated by John Irons)

[Brian Turner was a guest at the 2009 Poetry International Festival, Rotterdam.

That text was written for that occasion.]

Bibliography

Here, Bullet, Alice James Books, Farmington, ME, 2005
(republished in UK by Bloodaxe Books, Manchester, 2007)

Talk the Guns, Alice James Books, Farmington, ME (forthcoming in 2010)