Poetry is a medium of self-expression, and the voices poets inhabit when they write their verses speak to the truth of human emotion and our shared existence across countries, cultures, and communities. Notre Dame is an institution that values community, and strives to create a place in which everyone can flourish. We live in solidarity with all people, and grow alongside them in our different paths. Poetry can help us see our differences in a new light, and find similarities in unexpected places.
Notre Dame Press is proud to support these poets and happy to share their works celebrating heights of queer joy while delving into the complicated layers of trauma that can surround queer identities.
Auto/Body
by Vickie Vértiz
Winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry
“In this collection, Vértiz asks the necessary questions, invites us to give our thanks and not our judgement and shows us that the way forward is through the memories we live out daily.”
—Raquel Salas Rivera, former poet laureate of Philadelphia
Stepmotherland
by Darrel Alejandro Holnes
Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
“In Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes teaches us the complications of love, whether it comes in the form of romantic passion or unrequited patriotism. But this is also a view of the many permutations of manhood, all of its beauty and even its bruises—and sometimes under the makeup, we find both.”
—A. Van Jordan, author of The Cineaste
My Kill Adore Him
by Paul Martínez Pompa
Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
“Paul Martínez Pompa deconstructs with a deft sword. Straddling literary strategies, no supposition nor paradigm is safe. He slays the stereotypic dragons within as well as without, putting popular culture, elegy, nightmare, personal narrative, identity and gender politics in the same hat, and drawing from the source, Pompa plays a poetic hand for keeps. Every turn of trope is more delightful than the last—a breakaway collection from an exciting new writer.”
—Lorna Dee Cervantes, author of Drive: The First Quartet
The Inheritance of Haunting
by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes
Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize
“A brutal, but necessary, unveiling of violence and the ghosts we carry with us daily, The Inheritance of Haunting sings the unbearable and still makes a claim for survival. These are intricate poems that are odes to the women who have come before us, odes to the women who have been silenced by fear, and odes to the ‘wreckage of centuries.’ With language that is alive, inventive, sound-driven, and ricocheting with power, this is a fierce and breathtaking collection that risks calling for a great reckoning with our collective past.”
—Ada Limón, current Poet Laureate of the United States