READING: Poets & Art with Brenda Cárdenas

READING
Poets & Art with Brenda Cárdenas

Join Wisconsin Poet Laureate Brenda Cárdenas 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.

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.

This event is made possible with support from:
Raclin Murphy Museum of Art
Notre Dame Arts Initiative
Creative Writing Program
Department of English
Initiative on Race and Resilience
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Somos ND
Poetry Foundation