Iraq through the eyes of a poet

Brian Turner: 'Oh yes, I was frightened. Fear is something you have the time.'
Photograph: Cyril Byrne

Brian Turner's graphic collection of poems in 'Here, Bullet' chart his terrifying experiences as a soldier on the frontline in Iraq with sympathy, not rhetoric.

"In Iraq, it was never knowing where the bullets are going to come from and who is going to fire them

A MAN GOES TO war, a soldier returns. A soldier goes to war, a poet returns. It is one of literature's enduring traditions, as old as war. Homer, it is maintained, albeit contentiously, went to war and watched and returned. So too did a Californian named Brian Turner, who joined the US army when he was 30 and served as a professional soldier for seven years: "Seven years, one month and 29 days."

Turner had written poems before he went to Iraq, but agrees that his collection Here, Bullet was shaped by what he saw. "Experience made these poems, experience but I guess more than anything, it was the need to tell what is happening. This was a story that needed to be told. And I felt it wasn't being told. The poems in Here, Bullet represent one of the few times in my life when I was not imposing myself on the subject. Instead, I was actually listening to the subject, watching."

And watch he did, though never voyeuristically and always with a sense of the enemy's unique history and culture. "Once, in the pre-dawn, I was watching the skyline and a shell exploded and the building that was there was suddenly gone." Turner then adds that it had been a 12th-century castle built by a man who had quelled Crusaders.

The descriptions are graphic, real:

"The civil affairs officer, Lt Jackson, stares

at his missing hands, which make

no sense to him, no sense at all, to wave

these absurd stumps held in the air

where just a moment ago he'd blown

bubbles

out of the Humvee window, his left hand

holding the bottle,

his right hand dipping the plastic ring in

soap . . ." - from 2000lbs

Yet the strongest emotion coursing through his vivid, often cryptic, conversational narrative poems is sympathy. They are not personal poems. Turner grieves for the injuries he has seen, for the deaths and most of all, the helplessness:

"The ghosts of American soldiers

wander the streets of Balad by night

unsure of their way home . . . And the Iraqi

dead,

they watch in silence from rooftops

as date palms line the shore in silhouette

leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind

blows" - from Ashbah

There is no rhetoric, just profound human sympathy. He mentions the Iraqi translators who worked with the US army. "After we left, we heard that 12 of them had been killed by the Iraqis, killed for helping the Americans."

Since the publication of Here, Bullet by Alice James Books in the US in 2005, Turner has to date won nine major literary awards. The British publication came out last year and an increasing audience has begun to grasp the reality, not only of events in Iraq, but of war in its widest context through the witness of Turner. In person, he couldn't be milder, or more unassuming. He is a kindly, quiet man sitting in a hotel lounge, spreading cream and jam on a somewhat lop-sided scone. His suitcase is on the floor beside him and he is wearing a dark green knitted sweater. His eyes are pale blue and open. As he moves across the room he seems to have a slight limp. He turned 41 in February. Maybe he looks a little older, perhaps he is simply weary. There is no anger, no theatricality.

Nor is there anything particularly military about him, unless perhaps, his polite respectful tone. But he is gentle, not curt. He doesn't see himself as a hero and, on being asked was he frightened in Iraq, says, "oh yes, I was frightened. Fear is something you have all the time". He mentions how much he admires the way in which Tobias Wolff explored fear in his Vietnam memoir, In Pharaoh's Army (1994). "In Iraq it was never knowing where the bullets are going to come from and who is going to fire them. We wear a uniform, but the men we're fighting don't . . ."

IT IS ONLY ABOUT an hour later when he mentions in passing that he would rather have sat with his back to the wall, instead of facing the opposite way, with his back in full view of the open door. "It's what happens, you get used to looking around, looking up, wondering where a sniper might be hidden, waiting. It's not as bad as it was [ the edginess], but I'm still slightly, well . . ." He means jumpy, but Turner is an understated character, there is no drama, no obvious ego, underplaying the fact it takes a long time, if ever, to reach a personal peace about experiencing combat.

He spent a year in Iraq. "I was there from November 2003. So this coming November will be the fourth anniversary of my coming back." And still it goes on. Is there a conclusion? Turner replies with a "who knows" expression and likens the situation to "that story in Dr Seuss, you know the one where the two men just can't agree?" The Zax could illustrate the futility of war everywhere: "I'll stay here, not budging! I can and I will/ If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still." (From The Sneetches and Other Stories 1961, 1989 by Dr Seuss Enterprises).

Nowadays, most American actors, directors, writers and academics when visiting Europe feel obliged, and are only too willing, to offer their views on the current US administration, with exasperation being the shared tone. They expect to be asked for their opinions. But Turner is different, he is unhappy about what it going on, but he is not given to easy polemic and, although critical, is not about to engage in US bashing, and does not believe in making sensational statements.

Still his concern is obvious. Much later in the interview, he refers to how poorly the administration handled the disaster in New Orleans and expresses his admiration for the courage and resilience of the black community, "the people that always get forgotten". Something makes me ask him if he has any Irish ancestry, after all doesn't everyone? And he looks Irish. "I do, I don't know from where, but ancestors left Ireland about 1840, the Famine probably, and at first they settled in Tennessee and did well, but then the civil war happened and they moved on to Arkansas, and did well and then the Depression happened and they moved on again, and ended up in California."

MANY WRITERS would prefer to be asked only about their work, particularly the book of the moment. For Turner it is different. "Well, there is only one book" but aside from the fact that the book is a collection that has impressed, Turner has a story, he fought in Iraq. He is a soldier who was already in the army by choice, who went to war and returned. He is both witness and truth teller. Other writers in other wars were men who had no choice but to go to war. "No, I was in the army. I had joined at 30 because there was a tradition in my family and also as you know, 32 is the cut-off age, I had finished school and gone to college in Oregon and I'd lived in Korea for a year before I joined the army, and so I knew I had left it late."

What was he doing in Korea? "Teaching English, I had gone there because I wanted to see what living in a country with a culture so different from mine would be like. It was great for the time I was there, but I wouldn't have wanted to stay permanently." Because of the attention generated by Here, Bullet and Turner's experiences in Iraq, it comes as a humbling surprise to discover from the biographical note inside the cover that he has also served in Bosnia for seven months, between 1999 and 2000. "Oh that was very different, I went there when we (the US military) were winding down. I maybe heard one bullet being fired while I was there. In Iraq, it was different, it was combat." His poems were born as notes carefully filed in journal form. "I had about seven of these notebooks, of about 200 pages each. Every time I filled one up, keeping notes like a diary, I'd mail it home. That's how it all arrived back safe." Notebook by notebook.

He was born in Fresno, California, almost the centre point of the state, situated in the San Joaquin Valley, not all that far from Steinbeck's Salinas. "My father was a welder and my mother was a bar tender and then became a health care worker. She became involved in the administrative aspects." He is one of four children, "but as they came from different marriages, I was raised as an only child."His childhood seems pretty normal and he was interested in music. "I play bass and I used to write the songs for this group I'm in but I wasn't much good at it. The drummer was better." His group, which had undergone several re-inventions, is currently known as Dog Walking - "we used to be called 'The Dead Guys', I liked that one better." He says, "I didn't really like school but I always enjoyed English, and liked reading, Steinbeck of course. And I love history."

His historic sensibility shapes much of his responses to life. "My mother encouraged my poetry." He mentions The Grapes of Wrath. "It's such a great book" and you feel that he understands that better than most, perhaps because he knows what physical hardship is like. "We were never hungry. No food was never a problem. Soldiers are well fed, but it is so hot in the desert, and then it gets so cold. There was snow in Iraq." There was also the smell of death. But again, Turner does not dramatise. On being asked about killing, he says, "I prefer not to talk about that", but is anxious for his refusal not to be taken as a slight. He remembers being trained to shoot. Firing at targets in training is not the same as combat. In a real situation, you tend to shoot far more randomly. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to fire directly at a human, he agrees.

He was a group leader and describes the difficulty of running when slightly disabled. "I hurt my ankle the week before we went to Bosnia and it didn't heal." Although he subsequently underwent surgery, it is not right, and he is lame. "It has also left me with this weight problem, I can't exercise the way I'd like to."

Lame or not, he was an infantry team leader in Iraq. They toured in Strykers, which are armoured vehicles with wheels, not tracks. "I was in charge of men who were half my age, there I was 37, 38, with 18-year-olds. It makes you think," says Turner, who has no children and was raised, as mentioned earlier, an only child.

HE HAS THOUGHT deeply and battled with the ambiguities of war, that war. What is Iraq the country like? "It is beautiful, the light . . . when you look at the cover of the book - that's me standing in the desert but what you don't see is what I am looking at, elephant grass that's about 15 feet high, the river . . . the Tigris River divides Iraq. Much of the landscape is lush and green. And in the towns and cities, there are wonderful buildings. This was a great culture, all being destroyed."

He is good natured and down to earth, and for a self-effacing person, he is a good talker. Over the course of the interview, you discover by chance that he speaks Russian. "My ex-wife is Russian, we got divorced between my coming back from Bosnia and going to Iraq." He often corrects himself. "So this frightened guy went to war and this more sober guy came back" he says and laughs, before pausing and saying, "No, it was deeper than that. Deeper than being 'frightened.' It was dark and disturbing."

It is obvious that Turner takes the business of serving in a war very seriously. Vietnam inspired writers such as Wolff, Michael Herr, Larry Heinemann, and Tim O'Brien, whom Turner admires, as well as the great poet Bruce Weigl. Does Turner look to the war poets such as Wilfrid Owen, Brooke or Sassoon? "I admire Owen, he gets a sense of what war is really like, the mud on the boots - but Brooke and Sassoon, no, not for me, they're too, um . . . Victorian. But I'm interested in Brooke the man."

Having read at the DLR Poetry Now Festival, Turner wants to make a short visit to some central European cities. His sense of history needs to see these places. "I also hope to get to Cracow, but maybe not this time." He has to be back in Ireland to open this year's Cúirt International Festival of Literature for which he is also writer-in-residence.

He may not look particularly American, but Brian Turner with his humanity and honesty, his ability to look deeply and to report truthfully, his need to tell "this most important story" represents all that's good about being American, all that's great about being human.

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner (Bloodaxe Books), £8.95. Cúirt International Festival of Literature runs from Apr 22-27 at Galway Arts Centre. www.galwayartscentre.ie/cuirt

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times