Back to home page - News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

Phantom Noise

by Brian Turner - £9.95  Bloodaxe Books Ltd (2010)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781852248765 | ISBN 10: 1852248769

Shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize
 
Brian Turner's first book of poems, Here, Bullet, was a harrowing, first-hand account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. In Phantom Noise he pumps up the volume as he faces and tries to deal with the traumatic aftermath of war. Flashbacks explode the daily hell of Baghdad into the streets and malls of peaceful California, at the same time sending Turner's imagination reeling back to Iraq. If he thought he had written all he could of his Iraq experiences in Here, Bullet, he was mistaken, for what he saw and felt there affected him so profoundly that more poems had to be written, years later, from a place of apparent safety.
 
Brian Turner writes a powerful poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. Like Keith Douglas’s poems from the North African desert in the Second World War, Turner’s testament from the war in Iraq offers unflinchingly accurate description but no moral judgement, leaving the reader to draw any conclusions. Repetitive media reports show little of people’s daily experience of the war and occupation.
 
In Phantom Noise, as in Here, Bullet, we see and feel the devastatingly surreal reality of everyday life and death for soldiers and civilians through the eyes of an eloquent writer who served in the US Army for seven years, with a year’s tour of duty in Iraq as an infantry team leader.

(Price & availability last checked: January 2019)

This website can't tell you if we have this book in the shop or not - to ask, phone us or use the enquiry link below. (We can order most books within 7-10 days, subject to availability.)
  


In booklists: Peace and War in Poetry and Writing, Experiences of War - Soldiers, World Poetry - North America and Canada,
In categories: Peace & Human Rights, Poetry & Writing, World - North America,

© News From Nowhere Co-operative Ltd IP24524R 2004-2024 | Privacy policy | Contact | return to top of page