Just Arrived: “Here, Bullet” & “Phantom Noise” by Brian Turner from Bloodaxe Books
As I tweeted on Thursday, I received a parcel from Bloodaxe Books (UK) that I suspected contained poetry—and on opening it I was proven right.
The books are Here Bullet and Phantom Noise, both by US poet, Brian Turner. I first heard of Brian when I was driving to one of the Autumn Poetry Readings of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective in 2009 and tuned into a public radio documentary on contemporary war poetry. Brian Turner was one of the featured poets and I heard his poem AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem) for the first time. Well, I loved that poem and I wanted to read more of Brian’s poetry, so I think finally having both of his collections on my ‘To Be Read’ table is a good step along the way!
The fact that Brian is published in the UK by the prestigious Bloodaxe Books probably gives you an idea of how his poetry has been received internationally, but here’s a bit more information for you from his author page:
“Brian Turner served for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq from November 2003 with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999-2000 he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division. Born in 1967, he received an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before joining the army.
His poetry was included in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with a feature-length documentary film. His collection Here, Bullet (Bloodaxe Books, 2007) was first published in the US by Alice James Books in 2005, where it has earned Turner nine major literary awards, including a 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship and a 2007 NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry. In 2009 he was given an Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship. His second collection, Phantom Noise is published by Alice James Books in the US and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK in 2010. It was shortlisted for the 2010 T S Eliot Prize.”
And now to the back covers of the books.
Regarding Here, Bullet the back cover reads:
“Here, Bullet is a harrowing, first-hand account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. Iraq war veteran Brian Turner writes powerful poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. Like Keith Douglas’s poems from the North African desert in the Second World War, Turner’s testament from the present war in Iraq offers unflinchingly accurate description but no moral judgement, leaving the reader to draw any conclusions.”
(You can read more from the back cover, including review quotes, here.)
And again from the back cover, it would appear that Phantom Noise is very much a progression of that first collection:
“Brian Turner’s first book of poems, Here, Bullet, was a harrowing, first-hand account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. In Phantom Noise he pumps up the volume as he faces and tries to deal with the traumatic aftermath of war. Flashbacks explode the daily hell of Baghdad into the streets and malls of peaceful California, at the same time sending Turner’s imagination reeling back to Iraq.”
(You can read more from the back cover, including review quotes, here.)
Needless to say, given what I have read of Turner’s poetry so far, I am very much looking forward to reading both collections. I also hope to feature some of his work as Tuesday Poems.