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Veteran turns war poet

Nov-18-2005 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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By MICHAEL DOYLE

WASHINGTON - Brian Turner found the poetry in war.

In the burned flesh, and the bullet's hiss. In the surgeon's red eyes, and the rounds striking home.

Now, the 38-year-old Iraq war veteran is finding something else. Turns out, there's fame and even a little fortune in poetry. Especially when, like Turner, you're both breaking new ground and upholding a long tradition.

"In poem after poem," publisher April Ossmann said, "you feel like you've been stabbed in the heart."

Turner's collection, "Here, Bullet," came out barely two weeks ago, and it already is attracting the kind of buzz most poets can only imagine. The storied New Yorker magazine has discovered Turner. East Coast radio and television want him. A reading tour will start in Maine and end up who knows where.

It's all quite a turn for Turner, who installs home alarm systems in between teaching the occasional class at Fresno (Calif.) City College. It's also a long way from the Iraqi nights when he would write by a red-tinted flashlight after returning from patrol. Still, the former Army sergeant always thought he had found a rich vein.

"As soon as I came back, I knew I had something people would want to read," Turner said. "I knew that even when I was in Iraq."

He was right.

Turner's collection won this year's Beatrice Hawley Award. It's not a household name but in the notoriously skinflint world of poetry, it's a pretty sweet deal. The award comes with $2,000 and publication by a Maine-based poetry cooperative called Alice James Books. It also engaged the promotional acumen of Ossmann, the publishing house director with contacts at the likes of The New Yorker and the New York Times.

"It's opened up a lot of doors," Turner said. "I've met a lot of people who I wouldn't have met otherwise."


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