New Life

War Reporter (2013) - described in the Guardian as 'a masterpiece of truthfulness and feeling, and a completely sui generis addition not just to writing about war but to contemporary poetry'- was the fruit of a bond between the poet Dan O'Brien and the war correspondent Paul Watson that demanded of each an extreme degree of self-exposure. In New Life the scope of that bond is both deepened and broadened, taking in not just the Arab Spring and its aftermath in Syria, Libya and Egypt but Afghans on the tourist trail in Canada, meetings with Hollywood producers, and changes in the personal lives of the war reporter and poet. Nothing is off-limits. This is a way of writing unique in contemporary literature.