Brunswick residents, faculty, and students alike filled the Main Lounge of Moulton Union to hear Iraq war veteran and poet Brian Turner read from his recent collection, Here, Bullet. As Turner's soft but piercing voice filled the room, the audience sat transfixed. Most looked to the podium, but others looked down as Turner read about his experiences as an infantry team leader.
Turner, who earned a master's of fine arts degree from the University of Oregon before going abroad for a year in Korea, enlisted in the peacetime army upon his return. He was deployed in Bosnia from 1999 to 2000 before serving in Iraq for a year in 2003. During his time in Iraq, Turner filled his few spare moments jotting down notes and thoughts.
Because of his prior experiences writing poetry, Turner said that writing in the middle of battle was, "a natural motive for me."
Here, Bullet is not Turner's first publication. However, he said that his style of writing changed in Iraq.
"A lot of the embellishment, a lot of the musicality that I had put into books before had been intentionally checked [in this book]," he said.
"I wanted it to be open and accessible to the person at the bus stop. I come from a working-class family?that isn't a lack of intellect and sophistication, it's just a different approach to sophistication."
Matt O'Donnell, the associate editor of Bowdoin Magazine, introduced Brian Turner before the reading. O'Donnell is also the founder of "From the Fishouse," an online audio archive of emerging poets, through which he become connected with Turner.
Once Turner took the podium, the audience went silent. He began the reading with "Here, Bullet," the poem for which the collection is named.
His poems told stories about an army cook with startling green eyes killed by a roadside bomb, the suicide of a deployed soldier, and the longing for America expressed through a war medic's guitar. In between his readings, Turner shared some of his personal experiences not contained in the collection. He talked about waiting to be taken home while mortar shells exploded around him, writing high in a tower gazing over the desert, and Iraqi culture.
"[There is] so much we can learn," said Turner about the culture.
"The Iraqi people are very brave. They're just like us?they are women and men with babies, with crushes," he said. "I think you probably would be able to emphasize with that."
He also spoke about how he came to see the insurgents while deployed in Iraq.
"There are so many different reasons why each person picks up a rifle," he said. Turner told how an Iraqi will be paid $80 a day to shoot at American soldiers and $500 to kill one, and how many are content aiming to miss for the smaller sum.
Throughout the reading, Turner was very modest and quietly unaware of the impact of his words. After reading a few poems, he said, "Allow me to indulge you with a few more."
When urged to read more poems, he said, "I don't want for people to fall sleep."
Coming from a working-class family?his father, a welder, and his mother, a working bartender?Turner says he is not used to the spotlight. Since the book was released in early November, it has received the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, and has become a New York Times editor's choice.
Despite his modesty, many students were affected by the reading.
"It was really cool?you hear about the war, but you never really know how it is to actually be there," Charles Stern '09 said.
While the reading was focused more on the emotions and environment of Iraq, the night was not free of politics. One of the first questions Turner was asked was how he felt about the current rhetoric in Washington about the war. After thinking for a moment, Turner replied, "I don't know about the word 'rhetoric.' It sounds loaded."
Turner then proceeded to give his opinion about the war as a whole.
"I believe that pre-emptive action is not a strategy we should use overseas, and that it's not a strategy we should use at all. As a leader in the world, it's not how to lead?I don't think it was a good decision." He also shared the mixed feeling he felt when first notified that he was going to Iraq.
"I mulled over prison time," he said. However, Turner did go, and fought despite his personal feelings.
"The war affects everyone like a rock in the pond," Turner said.
During a question and answer session following the reading, one town resident asked Turner if it was difficult to reflect in the midst of the conflict.
Turner only replied that, "With death constantly in the background, I felt pressured to write as quickly as possible."
At the end of the reading, Turner requested donations to booksforsoldiers.com, an organization that provides books to soldiers fighting overseas. He talked about how he used the service himself while he was fighting, and how much of a difference it made. Turner finished by saying, "you might just influence somebody."