The Festival of Ideas: Poetry & War
As part of the 2014 Festival of Ideas, the Universtiy of Liverpool hosted 'Poetry and War'. Carolyn Forche, Brian Turner and Ilya Kaminsky have all written poems concerned with their experience of war, and each gave a reading showing some examples of this work, as well as answering questions from the audience.
Brian Turner
Brian Turner is an American poet, essayist, and professor. His first collection Here, Bullet (2005) won the Beatrice Hawley award. His second, Phantom Noise was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2010. As well as poetry, in 2014 he published a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country.
Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky's debut collection, Dancing in Odessa won the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, and ForeWord Magazine's Best Poetry Book of the Year. He has since won numerous other awards, co-edited anthologies including the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (2010) and co-founded the Poets for Peace program.
Carolyn Forche
Originally from America, Carolyn Forche is a highly esteemed poet, editor, translator and human rights advocate. Her four poetry collections have won multiple awards, as has the seminal anthology she edited in 1993, Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness.
