Brian Turner is coming to Unbound!
We love our poets at Unbound, and so are thrilled to welcome to the festival one of the most beloved and acclaimed poets working in America today - Brian Turner. Brian will be participating in our panel featuring writers who are also veterans.
Brian Turner is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently: The Wild Delight of Wild Things, The Goodbye World Poem, and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook, all of which were published by Alice James Books this year. His other collections include Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise. He has also published a memoir of his time at war, My Life as a Foreign Country. He is also the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres anthologies. A musician, he has written and recorded several albums with The Interplanetary Acoustic Team, including 11 11 (Me Smiling) and The Retro Legion’s American Undertow. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
A Guggenheim Fellow, Brian has received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando, Florida, with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.
Praise for The Dead Peasant’s Handbook:
“When I first heard Brian Turner has finally finished his long-awaited new book—I wanted to read it that very same day. Yes, I began reading right there, by the mailbox. I admire his work, yes. But why? Because in this book I can see how after artillery’s fire the veteran’s knowledge and regrets set the days to the rhythm and music of others’ bodies’ pain. But what moves me even more, as I linger among these beautiful poems is a widower’s wisdom and echoing heartbreak—Turner’s brilliant elegies for his late wife. What endlessly moves me, too, is the music of an aged son’s watching his aged mother’s forgetfulness. Such humane music is this clarity on how “things we do” are “ghosts we live with. How they call to us.” I love this book.” - ILYA KAMINSKY