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
Angela (Angie) Trudell Vasquez served as the city of Madison, Wisconsin Poet Laureate from 2020 to 2024, and was the first Latina to hold the position. Angie received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. In Light, Always Light, came out in 2019, and her fourth collection of poetry, My People Redux, in 2022 both from Finishing Line Press. My People Redux won first place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poet’s annual chapbook contest in 2023 among other accolades. A former Ruth Lilly Fellow while attending Drake University as an undergraduate, she has a page on the Poetry Foundation’s website. During her poet laureate term for the city of Madison, she established the First Youth Poet Laureate program in the state of Wisconsin, and served as the Chair for the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission from June 2021 until September 2024. She is also a Macondo Fellow and has a small press, Art Night Books. Angie is a second and third generation Mexican American, a Chicana originally from Iowa. Her poems have been published in Somos Xicanas, Yellow Medicine Review, About Place Journal, on Poem-A-Day, among other places in print, online, and on stage. Her fifth collection of poetry How to Write Absence is seeking a home. She lives with her husband and their cat and is in the seventh year of rewilding portions of the lawn back to native prairie.