In the final part of my epic conversation with the American soldier-poet Brian Turner, our attention turned to the question: does writing help confront trauma and the violence he has witnessed and indeed participated in.
----more----Other subjects include:
- 'Sergeant Turner' vs Brian Turner: Poet
- the part of Turner and his colleagues that died in Iraq
- the rise of ISIS in Iraq
- how do you live with the experiences he has had
- how do I be happy
- love and a reading about his wife from My Life as a Foreign Country
- transitioning from war poet to poet
- can you leave the war behind?
- trying to understand the 'enemy'
- the time Turner was almost killed
- writing about torture and Turner's complicity with this
- can poems change people's attitude to torture, Guantanamo etc
- Iraq and the news cycle
- art, empathy, sharing and understanding
- 'The historians are wrong. We have decades ahead of us, just with Iraq'
- why Sweden has taken more Iraqi refugees than US
- is Turner a political writer?
- 'There could be a lot more troubling of the water'
- Turner on the future of Iraq
- on returning to Baghdad in 2012
And then, finally, we headed to lunch.
