The poems “I Meet Afghanistan Beside a Dirt Road Cut Into Mountain,” “Getting Left of the Boom,” “No Take Backs,” and “Afghanistan Speaks About the War” by Ben Weakley appeared in Issue 33 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this set of poetry.
I came to poetry as a way to document and bear witness to what I’ve experienced in my former life as a soldier. I often write about the experience of war and violence from my own perspective. In a generative workshop last year, I had the idea in a to personify Afghanistan. The Afghan people I interacted with remain an impenetrable mystery to me after spending a year in their country. They are kind, ruthless, charming, violent, hospitable, treacherous, brave, and beautiful – fully human. I’ve often reflected on how the people I interacted with must have seen us as hostile foreign occupiers, as strange outsiders with uncertain intentions, or as allies borne of harsh circumstances. I hope that the move of giving Afghanistan a voice added some depth and tension to these poems and help tell a richer story.
What was the most difficult part in writing this set?
The most difficult part of finishing these poems was getting comfortable with the voice of Afghanistan. I realize in personifying the country and our war there I could never capture the entire truth. These poems evolved from real events, so I hope that some small truths appear in conversation throughout the series of poems.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Seema Reza’s A Constellation of Half-Lives is the book I most want people to read, because it’s fierce, gritty, beautiful, and real. I know Seema through Community Building Art Works, and I love the way her poetry in this book explores war, trauma, and violence alongside being a mother and an American citizen who is trying to sustain hope in a world that doesn’t feel very hopeful.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I’d pick Charles Coe, whom I have never met, but whose poetry feels so wise and soulful that I can’t help but wonder what I’d learn about writing and life while talking to him over a beer.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I recently finished the full-length manuscript, Heat, Pressure, from which the Afghanistan Poems come. I’m in the process of finding a press that would be a good fit for my work. I’m always writing poetry, but I have a series of essays I want to work on in the coming months. I regularly teach workshops for Community Building Art Works and look forward to deepening that experience in the coming year.
Our thanks to Ben for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this work. Read “I Meet Afghanistan Beside a Dirt Road Cut Into Mountain,” “Getting Left of the Boom,” “No Take Backs,” and “Afghanistan Speaks About the War” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-hunters.
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Ben Weakley spent fourteen years in the U.S. Army, beginning with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and finishing at a desk inside the Pentagon. He writes poetry and essays about the enduring nature of war and the human experience. Ben’s work appears in the anthologies, We Were Not Alone: a Community Building Art Works Anthology and Our Best War Stories by Middle West Press. Other poems and articles appear or are forthcoming in Cutleaf, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, The Ekphrastic Review, and Vita Brevis, among other publications. His awards include first place in 2021 Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards, and first prize in the 2019 Heroes’ Voices National Poetry Contest. Today, Ben lives in Northeast Tennessee with his wife, their two children, and one very mischievous hound dog. You can read more of Ben’s work at https://bit.ly/BenWeakley.