California poet and Iraq war veteran Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet “a tough and eloquent volume” that won the Northern California Book Award for poetry, a PEN Center USA ‘Best in the West’ Literary Award in Poetry and a fist-full of other awards.

Writing the poems in “Here, Bullet” gave Turner a means of coping … But the poems, he says, didn’t offer the release that one might expect. “I mean, if I write a book about Iraq, say, seven years from now or even next year, it might be a cathartic experience. This sounds maybe overly dramatic, but when I was in Iraq (I was thinking) ‘This is what, Thursday? I might be dead by Monday, so what poem do I have to write today — if this is the last thing I’m going to write about?’ “

Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle including three poems. Read a Q&A with Turner and more poems from Here, Bullet at Alice james Books. Hear Turner read at fishhousepoems.com.