Official Website of Poet, Essayist, Editor, and Educator
about brenda
Brenda Cárdenas is the author of Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award and silver winner of the 2023 Foreword Review Indie Poetry Award; Boomerang (Bilingual Press, 2009); and the chapbooks Bread of the Earth/The Last Colors with Roberto Harrison, Achiote Seeds/Semillas de Achiote with Cristina García, Emmy Pérez, and Gabriela Erandi Rico; and From the Tongues of Brick and Stone. She also co-edited Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017) and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (MARCH/Abrazo Press, 2001), which won the Chicago Women in Publishing first place award for excellence in editing. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in an array of anthologies and journals, including POETRY; Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology; Latinx Poetics: The Art of Poetry; Braving the Body; Prairie Schooner; SWIMM Everyday; Good River Review; TAB: Journal of Poetry and Poetics; Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing; Court Green; Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Anthology; The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry; Through This Door: Wisconsin in Poems; and many others.
Cárdenas has enjoyed collaborating on inter-arts projects with musicians, visual artists, and choreographers. Composer Daniel Afonso (California State University) recently wrote choral music to her "Poema para los Tin-Tun-Teros," and the score was published in 2023 by Hal Leonard, the largest U.S. music publisher (Listen here). It was also performed in 2024 at New York's Carnegie Hall. Cárdenas and artist Cynthia Lollis contributed to Mind the Gap, an ekphrastic portfolio of print/poem exchanges edited by Tim Abel and Sara Parr in 2013. In 2009, Kyle Jenkins created a film animation of Cárdenas’ poem “Song” for Poetry Everywhere sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, and in 2008, Kelly Anderson choreographed a dance to her poem “Sonnet for Thunder Lovers and Primary Colors” for Dance Works Performance Company’s The Bra Project. In 2001, with the band Sonido Ink(quieto), Cárdenas recorded the spoken word and music CD Chicano, Illnoize: The Blue Island Sessions.
Cárdenas served as faculty for the 2021 CantoMundo writers’ retreat and as the 2010-2012 Milwaukee Poet Laureate. In 2014, she co-designed and co-taught the inaugural master workshop for Pintura:Palabra: A Project in Ekphrasis sponsored by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Letras Latinas (Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame). She currently teaches Creative Writing and U.S. Latinx Literatures at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she has won a University of Wisconsin System Outstanding Women of Color in Education Award and the English Department’s Faculty Graduate Teaching Award. She lives in Milwaukee with her husband, the poet Roberto Harrison and their dog Maya.
“This book [TRACE: Poems] is an ofrenda. With an astonishing awareness of the particular and the everlasting, Trace by Brenda Cárdenas plunges us into the mythic through tales of what is utterly real. These poems take on the healing of soul and the meaning of home. The poetry of Cárdenas is nothing less than the intermingling of the traces of what is spiraling around us and what lay beyond. I highly recommend it.”
—Robin Reagler, author of Night Is This Anyway, Into The The, and Teeth and Teeth
Next Event
Upcoming Events
Sat, Aug 03Estabrook Park, Picnic Site #5Aug 03, 2024, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM CDTEstabrook Park, Picnic Site #5, 4400 Estabrook Pkwy, Shorewood, WI 53211, USA
Sat, Aug 24Woodland PatternAug 24, 2024, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM CDTWoodland Pattern, 720 E Locust St, Milwaukee, WI 53212, USA
Wed, Sep 11Eastern Illinois UniversitySep 11, 2024, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CDTEastern Illinois University, 600 Lincoln Ave, Charleston, IL 61920, USA- Sun, Sep 15The CooperageSep 15, 2024, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM CDTThe Cooperage, 822 S. Water St., Milwaukee, WISep 15, 2024, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM CDTThe Cooperage, 822 S. Water St., Milwaukee, WICárdenas will be honored at Woodland Pattern's Annual Brunchraiser, which raises funds that allow this nonprofit to continue its programming. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera will perform a poetry reading.
Thu, Sep 19Harold Washington Library CenterSep 19, 2024, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM CDTHarold Washington Library Center, 400 S State St, Chicago, IL 60605, USA
Tue, Sep 24Muña 2024 Art Writing ResidencySep 24, 2024, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PMMuña 2024 Art Writing ResidencySep 24, 2024, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PMMuña 2024 Art Writing ResidencyOnline Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop for the Muña 2024 Art Writing Residency. It is a private event for the residents , but others might contact the Chuquimarca Art Library's director to request permission to join this program: info@chuquimarca.com
Thu, Sep 26University of Notre DameSep 26, 2024, 3:00 PM CDT – Sep 27, 2024, 8:00 PM CDTUniversity of Notre Dame, Holy Cross Dr, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USASep 26, 2024, 3:00 PM CDT – Sep 27, 2024, 8:00 PM CDTUniversity of Notre Dame, Holy Cross Dr, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USACárdenas will serve as the Poet Laureate of the Proceedings for the Institute for Latino Studies' (University of Notre Dame) 25th Anniversary Symposium. Over two days, Cárdenas will deliver two commissioned poems as well as reading other poems of her own and other Latinx poets.
Thu, Sep 26Poetry FoundationSep 26, 2024, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM CDTPoetry Foundation, 61 W Superior St, Chicago, IL 60654, USA
Thu, Apr 10Harry S. Truman CollegeApr 10, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CDTHarry S. Truman College, 1145 W Wilson Ave, Chicago, IL 60640, USA
Thu, May 15Mill Valley Library, Creekside RoomMay 15, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM CDTMill Valley Library, Creekside Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941, USA