My People Redux
The poems in the collection, "My People Redux," travel through time. We go back and forth between the present, "They Could Be Sisters," and the past, "Goose Eggs," not just the poet's past but that of her ancestors who came to the Midwest from Mexico in the late 1800s, as displayed in the piece, "My People Redux." The poet's voice is always female and strong, but also vulnerable as in the poem, "Child Pose Cannot Hold." These are poems of race, ethnicity, gender, and class. There are also mystical poems in this collection and things the poet cannot explain like in the piece, "Once in Seattle" and in "The Congregation." In Trudell Vasquez's fourth collection her concerns are the same as in all of her previous collections but her way of approaching the page varies. The poet travels in this collection: from Madison to Seattle, Santa Fe, Des Moines, Milwaukee, Washington D.C., Chicago, and outside of the country too, to the Caribbean to Isla Mujeres in Mexico. In the poem, "Everybody is Somebody's Child," we are given a glimpse of the poet's concern for all people across the globe. Ever present in all the work is nature, the poet's appreciation for the natural world and all its creatures, but especially the least fortunate among us.
Angie Trudell Vasquez
Angie Trudell Vasquez is a 2nd and 3rd generation Mexican-American writer, editor, publisher, and the current poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin (2020-2024). She holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Finishing Line Press published her collections, In Light, Always Light, in May 2019, and My People Redux, in January 2022. In 2021, she attended the Macondo Writers Workshop started by Sandra Cisneros, and became a fellow, also known as a Macondista. Her poems have appeared most recently in the Yellow Medecine Review, Sheltering with Poems, In Other Words, Hope is the Thing, and can be found online on Poem-A-Day, The Poetry Foundation's website, and the South Florida Poetry Journal among other places. In 2020 she published and co-edited a poetry anthology of Wisconsin poets, Through This Door, with then current poet laureate of Wisconsin, Margaret Rozga, through her press Art Night Books. In 2021 she was one of the recipients of a Creative Community Champion Award from Arts Wisconsin and the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. Today she is the Chair for the Campaign, and together with her husband will co-host WORT 89.90 FM's show Madison BookBeat once a month interviewing writers and their recent books in 2022.