Brian Turner isn’t your typical Iraq War veteran. But then again, he isn’t your typical poet either. After graduating from the University of Oregon with a master’s degree in fine arts, Turner enlisted in the U.S. Army and served for seven years as an infantryman and fire team leader.

After completing his education – which included time as an undergrad at Fresno City College – Turner joined up and was deployed with the 10th Mountain Division to Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1999 to 2000.

But it was only after he was sent to Iraq in 2003 that he started coming into his own as a poet, writing the material that would eventually be collected into his first book, the Beatrice Hawley award-winning “Here, Bullet,” which he discussed with a group of 20 students and faculty members on April 11 at De Anza’s Writing and Reading Center.

Ken Weisner, De Anza writing instructor and Red Wheelbarrow adviser, describes Turner as “a poet of courage, conscience and deep thinking.”

For many, poetry can be a way of coping with the traumas and stresses thrown at them by life. But for Turner, writing poems such as “Observation Post #71” and “2000 lbs.” was not a matter of therapy, but of record. Much of the material in his book was composed while he was still in Iraq, in moments of calm under his flashlight’s surreal red glow.

“It wasn’t cathartic. I didn’t get anything off my chest. Because after [I wrote], there’s still today, still this moment. I could still get shot through the window or get hit by a mortar. Death seemed always present.”

Turner’s poetry is stark, almost bare. Yet his vivid descriptions evoke a tone of mad doom and resignation to it, affecting all the war’s parties, Americans and Iraqis, soldiers and civilians.

“I try to write poems that are accessible, that you can inhabit that world and see what happens,” he says.

Going to Iraq was a difficult decision for Turner, who disagrees with U.S. foreign policy regarding the war. At one point, he says, he considered refusing to serve, going to prison or even escaping to Australia. Ultimately, he acquiesced and was deployed. He cites his connection to the men in his fire team, Tom Bosch, Tony Fiorillo and David Jakowski, as his reason.

“I love this country. This is my home. And I value service to this country. But it’s not running how it should be.

“People should be talking about this. There’s sort of a silence about this war. People feel like they don’t have the authority to write about it if they weren’t there. Even if they were, there’s sort of like this hierarchy of trauma in the military. It’s kind of silly.”

Still, his poetry has struck a chord, among both the general public and other service members.

“[After the book was published] I was contacted by a colonel who’d written a book on tactics. He wrote me, ‘To Brian Turner, the son of a bitch who talks with ghosts, and reminds me of my own.'”