Turned Earth - by Brad Richard (Paperback)

About the Book

"Turned Earth, the title of New Orleans poet Brad Richard's fifth collection, evokes an array of suggestive images and experiences: the turned earth of a garden bed or a grave; Earth turning through seasons and years; earth as material shaped or crafted, as on a potter's wheel; turning earth as metaphor for thought and reflection; and the sense of 'turned' as meaning 'spoiled,' our Anthropocene crisis never far from the poet's mind. Haunted by his mother and her own thwarted dreams of becoming a poet, the speaker meditates on grief while seeking out joy in all its forms"

Book Synopsis

Turned Earth, the fifth collection of poems by Brad Richard, offers a portrait of the artist as a grieving son who is also a husband, teacher, gardener, and attentive witness to our precarious world. Navigating life after his mother's death, the speaker uses memory and imagination to understand, as one poem's title declares, "How I Came to This." Tender and trenchant, elegiac yet often livened by humor, Richard's poems affirm the sustaining power of hope and love.

Review Quotes

"Turned Earth is a brilliantly meditative and mournful inquiry into forms of being and making. This significant and expansive collection calls us to map ecologies of planetary life, love, and loss across varied landscapes. Richard's book is a revelation."--Tonya M. Foster

"Brad Richard is not only a poet but a master gardener. In these poems, he turns to the earth--whether he is tending his own stubborn, lush garden in New Orleans, rooting through a childhood that reblooms in memory, laying to rest his lost mother, or bringing into his landscape the labor of love. Richard gives us an earth disturbed but fertile, vulnerable but verdant, uprooted but regrown."--David Groff

"In Turned Earth, Richard holds on to the ordinary exquisite as well as 'killer invasives.' The latter includes views of social injustice. Especially keen is his crown of sonnets, 'Matrilineation: Homage to Nell Parker (1944-2015), ' an elegiac apostrophe where son muses over the mother's poetics. The reader will find sudden beauty everywhere."--Kimiko Hahn

About the Author

Brad Richard is a poet based in New Orleans who has received honors from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and Poets & Writers. He is the author of four other books of poems, including Parasite Kingdom, winner of the Tenth Gate Prize. In 2015, he was named Louisiana Artist of the Year.