Bonus Episode: Brenda Cárdenas - Wisconsin Poet Laureate

BIO:

To honor the just concluded National Poetry Month, today we are interviewing Brenda Cárdenas, Wisconsin’s newest poet laureate. Brenda has authored Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. Her poems and essays have also appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, and she co-edited the anthologies Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest. 

She has also enjoyed collaborating with musicians, composers, visual artists, and choreographers on a variety of projects. Cárdenas is Professor Emerita of English at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee where she lives with her husband, the poet Roberto Harrison, and their dog Maya.