A Conversation with heidi andrea restrepo rhodes

Institute for Latino Studies

Available on-demand

Savor the scent of bright yellow mustard fields blooming across the hillsides. Partake in the mystery as an antique key opens a grandmother’s “chest of little things.” Witness the transmutation of chronic pain into lyrical, life-saving power. Embrace this vibrant oral history interview with poet heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, conducted by Notre Dame Ph.D. student Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza, that serves as the foundation for a rigorous exploration of how language’s restorative pulse can document, resist, and ultimately heal.

Will you be on campus in October 2026? Join poets Emma Trelles and Alexandra Lytton Regalado for Now You See It: Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art on Saturday, October 3, 2026 from 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. In this creative writing workshop, you’ll practice looking and writing more deeply through the lens of color in abstract and figurative works. For more information and to register for the workshop, please visit the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art website.

For more information on Letras Latinas at the Institute for Latino Studies, please visit the Letras Latinas website.

Origins and the Architecture of Wonder

The poetic development of heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is rooted in a childhood spent between the landscapes of Arizona and California. She recounts a formative sense of wonder sparked by her paternal grandparents. Her grandmother maintained a chest of robin’s eggs, nests, and pine cones, which functioned as sacred treasures accessed only by an antique key. This early reverence for the tactile world was mirrored by her grandfather, a renaissance man who deconstructed and rebuilt objects to understand their mechanics. These familial narratives find a poignant parallel in Karla Yaritza Maravilla Zaragoza’s own history of carpentry and translation; Zaragoza recounts how her father translated her childhood story into Spanish overnight—an act of solidarity and communion that established writing as a site of ancestral inheritance.

The Political Body: Illness as Archive

A central tension in the conversation is the conceptualization of the bed-bound body. Between 2012 and 2015, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes experienced a period of intense chronic illness that restricted her physical movement but expanded her archival reach. Influenced by the work of Aurora Levens Morales and the ferocious anti-colonial pulse of Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, she began to view illness not as a private struggle, but as a political and historical experience. Her collection, The Inheritance of Haunting, emerged from this period, framing the body as a vessel inheriting generations of colonial trauma and resilient capacity. This reframing moves poetry from mere self-expression to a social documentary of what the body remembers when the state forgets.

Identity as Practice and Method

For heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, queer, nonbinary, Colombian, and disabled identities are not static categories. Instead, they are active methods for articulating structural failures. Drawing from a genealogy that includes Pablo Neruda’s lyricism, Arthur Rimbaud’s experimentation, and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s queer ancestry, she describes her poetic house as a space of solidarity. Her work functions as a decolonial project, weaving together global kin and community to illustrate the entanglement of US imperialism across contexts from the Congo to Palestine.

The Future of the Craft: Neuroqueerness and Monstrosity

The dialogue shifts toward the horizon of the poet’s work, which continues to evolve through experimentation with form. Having recently finished a manuscript centered on monstrosity and beastliness, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is now turning her attention to neuroqueer Poetics. This project moves beyond topic into methodology, investigating how neurodivergent orientations to sensory experience dictate the very structure of writing on the page. She analyzes this through specific readings, such as “if I wear my hair this way,” which contrasts extractive mining labor with ancestral modes of sustainability, and “Sonnet for the study of Earth and dream state,” which explores “capillary rivers” and the “sadness that twins the groaning Earth.”

Advice to Writers: The Stewardship of the Poem

The conversation concludes with strategic advice for emerging writers. Using a soccer analogy, heidi andrea restrepo rhodes notes that one must take at least ten shots for every goal made as a team. She emphasizes the importance of disconnecting the ego from the result, encouraging writers to view themselves as stewards of their poems. By treating the poem as its own being, the writer is freed to pursue the urgent and life-saving work of solidarity without the paralyzing fear of rejection.

How does childhood wonder shape the foundational aesthetics of heidi andrea restrepo rhodes? The poet’s aesthetic is built on a “deep sense of wonder” fostered by her grandparents’ reverence for small, natural objects. This creates a Poetics grounded in the tactile—the “chest of little things” serving as a metaphor for the poem as a collection of precious, found truths that require a specific “key” of attunement to access.
How is the experience of chronic illness reframed as a political act? By reframing illness as a “political and historical experience,” the poet uses the bed-bound state as a site for genealogical research. This perspective transforms physical isolation into a method for connecting the “exiled body” to broader global histories of resistance, influenced by the intersectional activism of Aurora Levens Morales.
What is the function of “neuroqueer” Poetics in the poet’s current work? Neuroqueer Poetics represents a shift from content to methodology. It explores how neurodivergent nervous systems dictate new methods of writing, challenging traditional standards of craft to better reflect unique orientations to sensory experience and subjectivity on the page.
How does heidi andrea restrepo rhodes define the relationship between poetry and “the human”? The poet views her work as a critical investigation into the category of the human within colonial history. Her poetry articulates the experiences of those historically ejected from this category, challenging the disposability of marginalized lives through the material transmutation of language.
What strategic approach does the poet suggest for managing literary rejection? She advocates for a “soccer goal” mindset, where for every one goal made as a team, one must take ten shots. By acting as a steward for the poem’s own life rather than attaching the ego to the outcome, the writer can view the submission process as a lottery of fit rather than a judgment of inherent value.

“The relationship between the two collections underlying all of my work scholarly and poetic I think is always a question of the human and the construction of the human as a figure in Western liberal history and Colonial history.” — heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
“Whether or not you’ve ever written a poem, if you are attuned to beauty, if you are attuned to feeling, if you are attuned to history, to just the world around you, the sensory experience, the relationships happening, then you are living in poetry in some way.” — heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
“Illness is always a political and historical experience and our bodies are inheriting multiple generations of both trauma as well as these histories of political violence, as well as histories of resistance and resilience and capacity.” — heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
“There was just a sense that crafting with words on the page was a kind of creative generative process that I could put something into the world that felt magical at the time.” — heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
“I definitely grew up feeling very strange in the world and I think writing has always been a way to reach for others, to connect with others, and to be in solidarity with others who feel strange in the world against the status quo.” — heidi andrea restrepo rhodes