Episode 12 - Brian Turner Part 4

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. 
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.