Poets & Art with Brenda Cárdenas
Award-winning Poet Laureate of Wisconsin Brenda Cárdenas was 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. Enjoy a reading of her poems and an exploration of poetry and the visual arts in conversation with one another.
Experience the Event
Presented by Institute for Latino Studies
Award-winning Poet Laureate of Wisconsin Brenda Cárdenas was 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. Enjoy a reading of her poems and an exploration of poetry and the visual arts in conversation with one another below.
Cárdenas also spent two days at the Museum observing, reflecting, and writing a new ekphrastic poem inspired by artwork from the Museum’s permanent collection, and led a community-focused ekphrastic writing workshop.
This event is made possible with additional support from: the Notre Dame Arts Initiative, Creative Writing Program, Department of English, Initiative on Race and Resilience, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Somos ND, and the Poetry Foundation. 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.
MoreMeet 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.