Motion Studies

About Brad Richard

Brad Richard is the author of Habitations (Portals Press, 2000), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019), and Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). His 2022 chapbook, In Place, was chosen for the Robin Becker Series from Seven Kitchens Press. He has taught creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, The Willow School (whose creative writing program he founded and directed), Louisiana State University, and Tulane University, and for New Orleans Writers Workshop. Series editor of the Hilary Tham Capital Collection from The Word Works, he lives, writes, and gardens in New Orleans. More at bradrichard.org.

Praise for Motion Studies

The poems in Brad Richard’s extraordinary new collection Motion Studies are lush and lyrical, passionate and elegant. This collection offers a range of forms, from the ekphrastic to the documentary to the confessional. Whether writing from the perspective of Thomas Eakins or describing his father’s art studio in the flooded ruins of New Orleans, Richard unflinchingly observes the world. This is a book about vision, about what it truly means to see.—Nicole Cooley, author of Of Marriage and Mother Water Ash.

From the broken spaces of our cities, bodies, and hearts, Brad Richard has come to mend. Here is a poet of exacting lyricism and refreshing voice. Mr. Richard is a healer. He doesn’t lift the scalpel of irony but instead leads us to the curative waters of our own human experience.—Mathew Dickman, author of Wonderland and Husbandry