Butcher’s Sugar

Brad Richard is chair of the creative writing program at Lusher Charter High School in New Orleans. A native of Texas and Louisiana, he received his B.A. from the University of Iowa and his M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. He has published three books of poems Habitations (Portals Press, 2000), MOTION STUDIES (The Word Works, 2011 Winner of the 2010 Washington Prize, finalist for the 2011 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from The Publishing Triangle), and BUTCHER'S SUGAR (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012) and two chapbooks, The Men in the Dark (Lowlands Press, 2004) and Curtain Optional (Press Street Press, 2011). Richard is the 2002 poetry winner in the Poets & Writers, Inc., Writers Exchange competition, and his work has appeared in a wide range of journals, including American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Bayou, ConnotationPress.com, Hunger Mountain, The Iowa Review, Laurel Review, Literary Imagination, The Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, New Orleans Review, North American Review, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Sakura Review, Satellite, Western Humanities Review, Willow Springs, and Witness.

With a beauty purged of sweetness, the voices of Butcher's Sugar sing of the sublime in the debased, violence and desire, the truth of whatever is "rank with the carcass of mystery." Moving from childhood through adulthood, these poems re-inhabit and reclaim myths about the body and the self.