Great Regulars: In [Brian Turner's] "Al-A'imma Bridge",

for example, "They fall from the bridge into the Tigris--/they fall from railings or tumble down, shoved by panic,/by those in the crushing weight behind them,/mothers with children, seventy-year-old men/clawing at the blue and empty sky, which is too beautiful".

Turner's compatriot, Yusef Komunyakaa, well-known for such tough yet transformative accounts of experiences in the Vietnam war as Dien Cai Dau (1988), continues to call his country to account. Yet servicemen and -women don't have a monopoly on personal experiences of war. Fellow-American Jorie Graham's family connection to the Holocaust means there's a hinterland of affect in her work which she can draw on in creating a voice that struggles to make sense of the senseless in "From the New World
": "they were all in there, the coiling and uncoiling/billions,/the about-to-be-seized,/the about to be held down".

from Fiona Sampson: The Independent: Poetic reports on today's front line

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