Our Book: How to Read

“‘How To Read: Poems,’ the first poetry title by the new independent publisher Friendly City Books, is a welcome contribution to the historic and ongoing canon of writers and artists in Mississippi.“ — The Clarion-Ledger

Poet Thomas Richardson’s first full-length collection How to Read includes two dozen previously unpublished poems, in addition to 25 poems that have appeared in Cantos, Deep South Magazine, Intégrité, and POMPA.

“In the opening poem of How to Read, the speaker expresses the desire to ‘build a poem from an earthquake.’ Thomas Richardson fulfills that mission with this extraordinary debut collection which is filled with poems that startle, shake and delight. Richardson is a master at wordplay and juxtaposition, combining theodicy and thunderstorms or biology class and first love in ways that are seamless, evocative and illuminating. These poems, as the best poetry always does, show us how to read the in-between spaces of human experience by paying attention. Here is a poet who understands the miraculous beauty and wisdom of everyday life.”—Jacqueline Allen Trimble, American Happiness (New South Press)

“Thomas Richardson’s How To Read is a bower of truth nestled within the bewilderments of the South. Where the poet is confronted—‘Tell us about Mississippi; we have to know’—you can expect wit, joy, and deep attention to the South’s past and present. Richardson’s gift for having us reconsider our home and our place within it makes How To Read the ambitious testament Mississippi needs.”—C. T. Salazar, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre Press), Winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award 2020 Poetry Award

“How to Read instructs us with passages from the author’s childhood, school days as student and teacher, churchgoing, marriage, and early stages of fatherhood. This Book of Thomas cites chapter and verse on life’s blessings, body blows, and ultimate bemusement. But there’s amusement, too, as we follow our wry guide on his itinerary through Mississippi and other heartlands. Some sons are dutiful, others prodigal. Thomas Richardson successfully blurs the distinction.”—James Fowler, The Pain Trader (Golden Antelope Press)