Description: "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"
Brief description: 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.
Review Quotes: "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