FARMINGTON —The University of Maine at Farmington’s celebrated Visiting Writers Series is excited to present award-winning poet Brian Turner as the popular program’s first reader of the 2023-24 season. Turner will read from his work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, September 21, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing with the author.

Turner is the author of several collections of poetry. His latest trilogy: “The Wild Delight of Wild Things” (2023), “The Goodbye World Poem” (2023), and “The Dead Peasant’s Handbook” (2023), all forthcoming with Alice James Books, traverses the landscape of loss, sitting quietly in grief before allowing oneself to gravitate once more towards delight and wonder.

His other collections include “Here, Bullet” (Alice James Books, 2005) was winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection, the 2006 PEN Center USA “Best in the West” award, and the 2007 Poets Prize and “Phantom Noise” (Alice James Books, 2010).

His memoir, “My Life as a Foreign Country” (W. W. Norton & Company), was included in Powell’s Best Nonfiction of 2014 list. Turner’s poems and essays have been widely published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Georgia Review, The New York Times, The Guardian, and National Geographic, among others.

Turner earned his MFA from the University of Oregon and went on to serve seven years in the US Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division.

“The Wild Delight of Wild Things” is available for pre-purchase UMF University Store and Devany, Doak and Garret Booksellers in Farmington.

The Visiting Writer Series is sponsored by the UMF Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program.

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