Brain Turner’s poetry and essays have appeared in the pages of some of the most revered American publications, from The New York Times to National Geographic. His work has been featured on NPR and the BBC. Brian Turner’s latest book, My Life as a Foreign Country: A Memoir has been called “Achingly, disturbingly, shockingly beautiful” by Nick Flynn. His two collections of poetry: Here, Bullet (2005) and Phantom Noise (2010) are arguably some of the most lyrical representations of combat in the 21st century.
In addition to being an infantryman in the U.S. Army for seven years, Brian Turner has worked as a machinist, a locksmith’s assistant, a convenience store clerk, a pickler, a maker of circuit boards, a dishwasher, an EFL teacher in South Korea, a low voltage electrician, a radio DJ, a bass guitar instructor, and more, and it was our honor to interview this everyman, infantryman, and literary giant for the inaugural issue of ISSUED.
As a veteran, I’m always asked why I joined the military. Can you speak to when you knew you wanted to serve and why?
For years after publishing my first book, I would be asked variations of these questions and I’d often respond that I come from a long military tradition in my family. That’s true, of course, but it doesn’t adequately examine or explain why I walked out onto the tarmac with an M-4 in my hands and boarded the plane that took me to a combat zone, for example. The questions you ask here are exactly the ones that propelled me into a memoir (My Life as a Foreign Country). And while the book still doesn’t fully answer it all, it does bring us closer to the reasons and antecedents connected to decisions I’ve made and the whys behind them.
Could you highlight a few of your favorite duty stations or assignments?
I was stationed at Ft. Drum and deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1999-2000 with the 10th Mtn before being stationed at Ft. Lewis and deploying to Iraq from 2003-2004 with the 2nd Infantry Division.
You’re an accomplished writer with three books published – two poetry collections and a memoir. What influenced you to write your story in poetry and memoir genres?
I’ve written poetry, fiction, and essays since I was young, with poetry taking over in my late teens (as I mistakenly thought writing poetry would help me to write better lyrics for the rock band I played bass guitar in). Poetry seemed a perfect genre or imaginative vehicle to explore the moments and experiences I had while serving as a sergeant in Iraq. I wrote my first book in my notebooks while in Iraq, and so the poems reflect that experience, I believe, in the form. That is, the poems have a raw and austere quality to them—something that’s different from the verses I wrote before or after my time there.
After my time in the military, I turned to memoir—and found that the genre helped me to explore memory in ways that were new to me. This isn’t really a fair comparison between the genres (because they are both so malleable and fluid), but I think of poets as sprinters and memoirists as long-distance runners. That said, I know that my natural inclination leans toward being a sprinter—so leaned on that as I approached writing my own memoir. It’s constructed of 136 fragments and much of what I learned in poetry helped inform how I approached the writing of memoir.
In what ways have your military experiences influenced your writing?
I wrote the poems in Here, Bullet in my notebooks while serving in Iraq from 2003-2004. Prior to that, I would have likely agreed with Wordsworth’s often-quoted literary maxim that poetry is best, in terms of experience, when composed as “emotion recollected in tranquility.” We can (and sometimes need to) write while we are in the great tumult of our lives. We can write from within the experience—as well as in the years after, as the dust has settled and we’ve had time to process and try to make sense of experience. During my time in uniform, here is one of the common refrains that heard and also repeated to soldiers around me: Pay attention to detail. It’s exactly the same mantra that’s part of the writer’s vocation. Pay attention to the details. The details are what tell the story. I think I first heard that from a teacher in a fiction writing class I took at Fresno City College years before I joined the Army.
What inspires you to keep writing?
I think inspiration isn’t the right word here. It’s a word we reach for when talking about the work that writers do, but I just don’t think that’s what’s happening within the writer. I’m addicted to the creative process. There are so many reasons why, but among them… Many of the people I love, those closest to me, my wife, my best friend, my father among them—they have all crossed over. They remain alive within me, within memory. Language is a tool that I use to remain in conversation with them. It is a way of being alive with memory. It is simply a way of being. Part of the reason I share the work I’m doing now is because I want others to fall in love with them, too. I want readers to help me to house these great souls in the wild architecture of the imagination. That they might live on.
At the level of language itself, I’m simply in love with the discovery of a phrase or a beautifully-constructed sentence. When language ventures out into the ineffable and somehow manages to bring back a portion of the sublime—this is part of what compels me to still myself for the meditation, the pen waiting over a sheet of paper as a fisherman might cast a line over a still body of water.
This is partly why I don’t think of writing as an inspired act. It is a practice. A meditation. A way of being.
What’s next for you? Any projects or readings) that we can look forward to?
I have three collections of poetry (The Wild Delight of Wild Things, The Goodbye World Poem, The Dead Peasant’s Handbook) due out from Alice James Books in August, September, and October of 2023. Each volume also has an album of music to accompany it. I’ve had the incredibly good fortunate to work and collaborate with so many phenomenally talented people on these books and albums—so I’m excited to see what people think of them and to be in conversation through art.
That’s one of the things I didn’t realize prior to becoming a published author: poems can not only create doorways into conversation, but they can also create doorways into friendships that never would have been possible otherwise. It is an unexpected and profound gift.
You’ve immeasurably supported the military and veterans’ communities through your writing. Are there other ways you would like to see these communities supported?
I’m trying to find more ways to be of service to these communities. I think each person finds their own gravitational pull and leans into that as best they can. For myself, I’ve tried to engage with writers overseas so that I might be in conversation with Iraqi writers, for example. A model for this was shown to me early on with the work of Kevin Bowen and others who originally founded and ran the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences. That said, if anyone reading this is involved in a project that I might be of help with—please reach out to my publisher or agents and they’ll forward the contact to me.
In contexts that are nonliterary in intent, there’s great work being done by several organizations working with veteran communities that involve working with horses and also project geared towards organic farming and connecting with the land itself.
I would love to partner with an organization with a mission to foster and promote artistic conversations and lasting friendships between veterans and artists in countries overseas—along the model of the original William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences.
Interviewed by AJ Baumel
ISSUED 