Apr. 14, 2023 By Carlotta Mohamed
In celebration of National Poetry Month, Queens College will host Brian Turner, an award-winning poet and veteran, who will share poetry about his war experiences and will answer questions moderated by fellow writer Jasper Lo on Wednesday, April 19.
The event, which is open to the public, will take place at 7 p.m. at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Klapper Hall, at 65-30 Kissena Blvd.
The event is part of the Spring 2023 Reading Series hosted by the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation. The reading will commemorate both the 20th anniversary of the war in Iraq and the annual celebration of National Poetry Month.
Turner, who holds a BA from Fresno State University and an MFA from the University of Oregon, served seven years in the U.S. Army — first in Bosnia-Herzegovina, then in Iraq, where he was an infantry team leader. He is well known for his writings on war.
Winner of the 2007 Poets Prize, he is the author of five collections of poetry, including ‘Here, Bullet’ (which received the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award) and ‘Phantom Noise’ (shortlisted for the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize) as well as the memoir ‘My Life as a Foreign Country.’ He is currently director of the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College. Turner has received prestigious fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Moderator Lo is a poet who served four years in the U.S. Army. His work focuses on violence, dislocation and food. An alumnus of the college’s MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation program, he is a fact checker at The New Yorker and was formerly a metro reporter at the New York Daily News.
Writer and poet Jasper Lo (Courtesy of Queens College)