Carmen Calatayud
Carmen Calatayud is the daughter of immigrants: A Spanish father and Irish mother. Her second poetry book This Tangled Body was published by FlowerSong Press, in conjunction with Letras Latinas, in 2024. Her book In the Company of Spirits (Press 53, 2012) was a runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award and an Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Anti-Heroin Chic, The Banyan Review, Cutthroat, OyeDrum, Poet Lore, Rogue Agent, Tahoma Literary Journal and Verse Daily. Her work appears in several anthologies, including Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Press, 2016) and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press, 2016). She is a Larry Neal Award Winner, a Best of La Bloga winner, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow, and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Calatayud is a DC area native who lives in San Antonio, Texas.
FB: @ccalatayud1
IG: @m.carmen.calatayud
Book: This Tangled Body
Book: In the Company of Spirits
Website: carmencalatayud.com (in progress)
This Tangled Body reads as surreal poetic memoir, navigating family history, war, migration, and the grit of relationships. Through lyrical language, the poet searches for ways to rescue a body that knows pain, addiction, and generational trauma. Elegies, love letters, and concussions cross paths here, along with planets and stars, demonstrating that the potential to heal is possible when raw truth and grace are present. Calatayud’s willingness to face the land of the dead and cross all borders is on full display. As she invites us to “leave this continent and/light the path behind us on fire,” her poetry insists we return to love and love hard.
This Tangled Body by Carmen Calatayud received a subvention from Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies—as part of its ongoing effort to support Latinx poets and community-minded publishing.