Artist Profile: Brenda Cárdenas
Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate 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. 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 and performed by the National Concert Choir at Carnegie Hall in 2024.
What inspires you most these days?
I’ve always been inspired by visual art, so as I’ve done in the past, I continue to write some ekphrastic poems that are in conversation with works that move me, and my Wisconsin Poet Laureate project is an ekphrastic relay between poets and visual artists in the state. I’ve also always been inspired by the natural world of which we are all a part, but these days especially by the crises befalling the Earth and its inhabitants due to climate change, pollution, and human being’s general disregard for the tenuous and delicate balance that holds the planet together. For these reasons, some of my poetry might be considered eco-poetry. Social justice has also always been front and center in my mind, and these days the decimation of our civil and human rights is so severe that I’ve found myself inspired to write more poems regarding issues such as immigration/migration, freedom of speech, and the various isms and phobias that plague our society.
How has community shaped your work?
Community—actually multiple communities—have been essential to my work as a poet and have shaped it in many ways. First, as a young poet in my early twenties, I was fortunate to be introduced to Woodland Pattern, a nonprofit multi-arts center and bookstore in Milwaukee, which has always had an emphasis on poetry. The community it creates through its programming—readings, workshops, concerts, reading circles, and other special events to which all are welcome—has been fundamental in deepening my appreciation for so many different modes, styles, and schools of poetry. I’ve befriended many incredible poets and artists through WP, which also gave me my first featured reading. I read with a Chicago Chicano poet, and this led to eventually opening up much of the world of Latine poetry for me.
The Latine literary community has also been extraordinarily influential on my work. For one, it gave me permission to write interlingually, mixing English and Spanish, and to reference my Chicana heritage in my work. It also deepened my sociopolitical awareness and commitment around issues of civil and human rights. It has been a great honor to write as a member of this community, and I don’t know if poetry would have ended up being as central to my life as it is without this community’s organizations, especially Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies with which I’ve engaged in many projects.
Over the years, I’ve collaborated with visual artists, musicians, composers, choreographers, and dancers on inter-arts projects, which has been another way of making community and extending poetry beyond the page in projects that both challenged and stimulated my creativity.
At this juncture in my trajectory as a poet, I am part of a group of women poets who began meeting during the COVID pandemic and who still meet weekly on Zoom to generate new work. This community supports taking fresh approaches to writing, keeping each other abreast of what is happening in the poetry world—new books, new voices, new experiments—and continuing to meet and befriend more poets. The women in the group, which we call “The Matrix,” have become like family, so we also hold annual writing retreats with one another, give each other feedback on larger projects like book manuscripts in progress, and celebrate each other’s successes.
Finally, of course as the Wisconsin Poet Laureate, one of my missions is to foster community among poets and, in the case of my WPL project, visual artists as well. I’ve created a kind of relay between poets and artists all over the state. You can learn about the project and register to participate at wisconsinpoetlaureateproject.com.
What are meaningful insights you have gained about yourself and/or the world through writing poetry?
Well, I write, at least in part, to learn, so I’m always discovering things about myself as a person and a poet as well as about the world at large through writing. For example, writing poetry made it painfully clear that even though I love reading minimalist poetry, I am definitely a maximalist. Revision for me is much more often a process of cutting than of adding. And this is also true in my life in general. My home is so filled with art, plants, and books that friends have said walking into it is like walking into a museum. The more friends I can add to my chosen family, the better. I’m usually comfortable in social situations and am generally a conversationalist—more extrovert than introvert, although as a child I was painfully shy. Of course, this has made me question why this is the case. I am a member of a large, close extended family and spent much time around adults as a child (I actually preferred them to other children), which accounts for some of it. But there’s certainly more to my discomfort with emptiness (I can’t stand a large white wall with nothing on it) or long periods of silence in the company of others. It may say something about my own insecurities--a fear of being silenced, of loneliness, and of lack, especially lack of warmth. Of course, I admire the quieter introverts; I married one! As a maximalist, however, I’ve also learned that I can become too bogged down in detail, and poetry reminds me how much powerful it can be to distill things down to their essence, how much more moving the understatement is than the overstatement.
One of the more profound insights writing poetry has helped me gain about myself is how moved I am by the intense beauty in the world around me. My awe has me perpetually gasping and makes me keenly aware of how small I am in the context of the larger workings of the world. The first few moments I stood at the north rim of the Grand Canyon, I instinctually cried. Last month, in Oaxaca City (Mexico), one evening on a walk, I came upon a woman dancing by herself in the middle of a cobblestone street to the music of a small band. Papel picado fluttered and shimmered in the sky above her as her footwork and the sway of her yellow skirt filled me with the same joy I sensed in her movements and broad smile. Just last week, while kayaking on a glassy river one morning, I heard two owls calling to one another, and the rest of the day, their calls kept echoing in my ears. Yes, I get frustrated, stressed out, depressed, and angry at so much of what is happening in the world, but these moments and the intensity of my response to them is what I live for. Poetry has also reminded me of how fleeting such moments and experiences are; it has kept me attuned to how powerful ephemerality, transformation, and hybridity are. These concepts are often the larger themes working in the background of the poems I write or the books I assemble.
Finally, poets often research the subjects they’ve chosen to write about or have happened upon when composing a poem. To write is to learn.
Do you have a favorite poet or poetry book? If so, explain why you connect to it or that particular poet.
I definitely don’t have a single favorite poet or poetry book, as there are so many I admire for different reasons, but a few of my favorite poets who have remained favorites over time include
--Juan Felipe Herrera, who was the 21st United States poet laureate, for how innovate and expansive his work has been over many years of writing and for how he reaches such diverse (in every way) audiences. Herrera has written in many genres, including poetry, creative non-fiction, young adult poetry, children’s literature and has written both bilingually and interlingually in English, Spanish, and occasionally languages of pre-Colombian Mexico. His work has often been highly inventive its elliptical approach and parataxis, oral dimensions, surreal imagery, and layout on the page. He is also a great communitarian who brings people together, has helped countless younger poets, and in his writing, expresses great kindness and care for others everywhere, especially those living through tragedy and under oppression.
--Cecilia Vicuña, a Chilean poet who has lived and written in the U.S. since the 1970s, for her incredible inventions in visual poetry and performance, and for her focus on interconnectedness, the environment, and weaving the world together. In many of her books, she includes photographs she has taken with the text of her poems written across, around, and on top of them. I also admire her language play—the way in which she cracks open words and riffs on their etymologies. Her performances reveal a poet highly attuned to the oral tradition and the ritual elements of the genre.
--Ross Gay, a poet and essayist, for his perceptiveness, great knowledge of and love for the natural world (including humans), appreciation for the mundane, and especially the incredible empathy so many of his poems express. One that has always stood out to me, especially as regards Gay’s vast capacity for empathy, is “Becoming a Horse.” I also appreciate his conversational tone, which easily draws readers in and feels natural rather than contrived. In fact, nothing about his work rings as calculated or false.
I could go on and on naming poets whose work I connect to, but you only asked for one, and I’ve already given you three!