Brian Turner

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“Just to hear another human voice, just to breathe in the dark.”

Poet—soldier—survivor Brian Turner was born in 1967 in Visalia, California. An army veteran, he was deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was an infantry team leader in the Iraq War. “Always enter a home with you right foot. The left is for cemeteries and unclean places.”

Violence and death haunt his work. Better to be sent to the moon than to the deserts of bone and flesh. “Because here, Bullet, here is where the world ends, every time.”

In Brian Turner’s poetry we see a brilliant fever dream of suffering, a lasting meditation on carnage and absurdity, putting sandbags over our heads to get a better view. We take a helicopter, humming with blood, with many voices over the years to come.

Brian Turner’s work includes: Here, Bullet; Phantom Noise; and My Life as a Foreign Country.

Brian Turner lives in Orlando, Florida.