A Conversation with Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas
Listen in to an oral history conversation with award-winning Poet Laureate of Wisconsin Brenda Cárdenas, interviewed by writer and poet Maria Kelson, who at the time (as Maria Melendez) was an associate professor of English at St. Mary’s College, and was teaching a course on Chicana literature. Brenda and Maria discuss playing with multiple languages in poems, the joy of listening to the music and rhythm of words, Brenda’s lively ekphrastic collaborations with visual artists over the years, and the hope that comes from writing for the audiences of the future.
Experience the Episode
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
Listen in to an oral history conversation with award-winning Poet Laureate of Wisconsin Brenda Cárdenas, interviewed by writer and poet Maria Kelson, who at the time (as Maria Melendez) was an associate professor of English at St. Mary’s College, and was teaching a course on Chicana literature. Brenda and Maria discuss playing with multiple languages in poems, the joy of listening to the music and rhythm of words, Brenda’s lively ekphrastic collaborations with visual artists over the years, and the hope that comes from writing for the audiences of the future.
Brenda will be in residence with Letras Latinas and the Raclin Murphy Museum Art in late September 2025 to launch “Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” a multi-year partnership between the Museum and Letras Latinas. In addition to her poetry reading on Wednesday, September 24 at 5:30 p.m., Cárdenas will spend two days at the Museum observing, reflecting, and writing a new ekphrastic poem inspired by an artwork on display. On Saturday, September 27, Cárdenas will lead a community-focused ekphrastic writing workshop. For more information, 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.
Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art
Join Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas on Wednesday, September 24, at 5:30 p.m. in the Atrium of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art for a talk and reading from her art-inspired work. Cárdenas’s remarks will center on “ekphrastic” writing—creative writings that respond to or are inspired by works of art. Her presentation will include projections of artworks that inspired some of her poems and her performance of them.
Cárdenas’s campus visit launches “Poets & Art: Ekphrasis at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art,” a multi-year partnership between the Museum and Letras Latinas, the literary initiative of the University’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS). In addition to her poetry reading, Cárdenas will spend two days at the Museum observing, reflecting, and writing a new ekphrastic poem inspired by an artwork on display. On Saturday, September 27th, Cárdenas will lead a community-focused ekphrastic writing workshop.
For more information on Poets & Arts events, please visit the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art website.
Meet the Poet: Brenda Cárdenas
Current Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas has published ekphrastic poems in her two books Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023) and Boomerang (Bilingual Press, 2009), as well as in literary magazines, and anthologies, most recently in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. Cárdenas is also co-editor of two anthologies, including Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017). She co-designed and co-taught the inaugural master workshop for PINTURA: PALABRA, a multi-year Letras Latinas initiative in partnership with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee where she taught undergraduate and graduate classes and seminars on poetry and the visual arts.
Meet the Poet: Maria Melendez Kelson
Maria Kelson has two collections of poetry (as Maria Melendez) with University of Arizona Press, which were finalists for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Colorado Book Award. Not the Killing Kind is her debut novel. It received the inaugural Eleanor Taylor Bland Award for Crime Fiction Writers of Color from Sisters in Crime.
A former Santa Fe Arts Institute and Hedgebrook resident, she has given readings and workshops at campuses and literary festivals around the U.S. and served as an American Voices arts envoy in Bogotá, Colombia. Born in Arizona, raised in northern California, she has lived in one southeastern, three midwestern, and five western states. Connect at mariakelson.com.
Brenda Cárdenas: Ten Takes from the Letras Latinas Archive
Poets House and Letras Latinas present a reading by poet Brenda Cárdenas, the second in a monthly series showcasing poets from the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. The Project archive began in 2005 and contains, to date, seventy interviews with Latinx poets and writers.