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Official Website of Poet, Essayist, Editor, and Educator

Poetry Collection TRACE: Poems

April 18, 2023
Red Hen Press
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About
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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; SWWIM Everyday; Mom Egg Review, Elysium Review, After Hours: Journal of Chicago Writing and Art; Good River Review; TAB: Journal of Poetry and Poetics; Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; Hope Is The Thing: Wisconsinites on Perseverance in a Pandemic; 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. In 2024, her poem "Bucketsful" was set to music by the alternative music trio Starwound based in Athens, Greece. Her poem “Para los Tin-Tun-Teros” set to choral music by Daniel Afonso was published by Hal Leonard Music in 2023 (Listen here)  and  performed by the Naitonal Concert Choir at Carnegie Hall in 2024. 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 is Professor Emerita of English at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she  won a University of Wisconsin System Outstanding Women of Color in Education Award, the Roberto Hernández Center's Latine Heritage Month 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.

BOOKS & Edited Anthologies
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Trace: Poems

Boomerang: Poems

From the Tongues of Brick and Stone

Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest

resistmuch.jpg

Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance

My Books
IN THE PRESS + praise

“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

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Upcoming Events

  • Book Drop Series Poetry Reading
    Book Drop Series Poetry Reading
    Fri, Nov 08
    Amorphic Beer
    Nov 08, 2024, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CST
    Amorphic Beer, 3700 N Fratney St, Milwaukee, WI 53212, USA
    Nov 08, 2024, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM CST
    Amorphic Beer, 3700 N Fratney St, Milwaukee, WI 53212, USA
    Cárdenas will give a poetry reading that highlights her book Trace and new poems. She will read with two other writers.
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  • Poetry Reading with Roberto Harrison
    Poetry Reading with Roberto Harrison
    Thu, Apr 10
    Harry S. Truman College
    Apr 10, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CDT
    Harry S. Truman College, 1145 W Wilson Ave, Chicago, IL 60640, USA
    Apr 10, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CDT
    Harry S. Truman College, 1145 W Wilson Ave, Chicago, IL 60640, USA
    Cárdenas and Harrison will read from their work at Harry S. Truman College in Chicago.
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  • Reading with Judy Halebsky for Marin Poetry Center, CA
    Reading with Judy Halebsky for Marin Poetry Center, CA
    Thu, May 15
    Mill Valley Library, Creekside Room
    May 15, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM CDT
    Mill Valley Library, Creekside Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941, USA
    May 15, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM CDT
    Mill Valley Library, Creekside Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941, USA
    Cárdenas will read with Halebsky for the Marin Poetry Center at the Mill Valley Library in Martin County, CA.
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  • Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop: Poet-in-Residence
    Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop: Poet-in-Residence
    Date and time is TBD
    Racline Murphy Museum of Art, Notre Dame
    Date and time is TBD
    Racline Murphy Museum of Art, Notre Dame, 100 Raclin Murphy Museum, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
    Date and time is TBD
    Racline Murphy Museum of Art, Notre Dame, 100 Raclin Murphy Museum, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
    Brenda Cárdenas will give a workshop at University of Notre Dame's Raclin Murphy Museum of Art regarding writing ekphrastic poems--poem in conversation with visual art.
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