Poet and former soldier Brian Turner, whose work provided the title for 2010's Oscar-winning movie "The Hurt Locker," will conduct a reading and question and answer session today at the Banks Recital Hall at Brenau University's John S. Burd Center for the Performing Arts.

The 1 p.m. reading and 4 p.m. question and answer session are free and open to the public.

Turner earned an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Oregon before enlisting in the U.S. Army. He served seven years, first in Bosnia-Herzegovina and then in Iraq as an infantry team leader in the 3rd Stryker Combat Brigade of the Second Infantry Division.

His first book of poems, Here, Bullet, published shortly after his return from Iraq, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award and went on to be named a New York Times "Editor's Choice" selection for 2007, and to win the 2007 Poets' Prize, among others.

Turner also was featured in "Operation Homecoming," a documentary that explores the firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning film, "The Hurt Locker," took its title from one of Turner's poems, the last lines of which reads "... Open the hurt locker and learn how rough men come hunting for souls."

Turner's second volume, Phantom Noise, published last spring, has been regarded as even more compelling than the first. He was a finalist alongside Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, for the prestigious T.S. Eliot prize, which went to Nobel laureate Wolcott.

The Brenau reading is part of the university's participation in the Georgia Poetry Circuit. For more information, call 770-534-6195.