“The fierceness in AUTO/BODY does not relent, whether in its crisp memory-capture or in its attention to legacy, to present, to future in its constant ache and rift of loveliness and tumult.”
Khadijah Queen, author of Conduit and My Black Peculiar
From odes to drag, to pushing back on the tyranny of patriarchy, to loving too hard and too queer, to growing up working-class in a time of incessant border violence and incarceration, this collection combusts with blood and fuel. In other words, Vértiz writes to dissolve a colonial engine and reconstruct a new vessel with its remains.
The poems in Vértiz’s second collection of poetry are “sometimes a body, sometimes flesh,” exploring “what it means to repair, to remake, to keep going even when rebuilding feels impossible.” As usual, the Tongva, Gabrielino, and Chumash territories we call Los Angeles is the backdrop and protagonist.
The University of Notre Dame Press is thrilled to publish her newest poetry collection, Auto/Body (February 2023), as part of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry.
ORDER THE BOOK HERE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS.
“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, Poet Laureate of Philadelphia
author of Lo Terciario and Antes de Isla, Volcan
INTERVIEWS AND BOOK REVIEWS
- Auto/Body Book Review, by DIEGO BÁEZ, Jan. 23, 2023, Harriet Books, The Poetry Foundation,
- An Interview with Vickie Vértiz, Author of “Auto/Body”
Jan. 18, 2023 , University of Notre Dame Press
“Vickie Vértiz’s voice sings out like a trumpet on a battlefield. She writes with a pen so determined it could win a war. Her poems make even the most foreign parts of the world feel known and personal. What a way to ascend and take us with her.”
Darrel Alejandro Holnes, author of Stepmotherland
Vickie Vértiz 