Viva Voce

By Imelda Zapata Garcia

About the Book

Viva Voce is an evocative journey through stillness and survival in which memory, ancestry, grief, and resilience cohabit. Latino poet Imelda Garcia weaves English and Spanish together with ease, drawing upon deep indigenous wisdom, spiritual ritual and personal narratives to create poetry that is intimate, incantatory and unflinching.

Garcia's poetry addresses motherhood and loss, social injustice and inherited trauma, love and endurance. She combines myth and modern life, bearing witness to upheaval and loss, while remaining steadfastly committed to tenderness, healing, and hope.

Viva Voce is both fearless and vulnerable and literally a living voice that offers poetry that acknowledges pain and injustice and quietly replies with emotion and verse.

About the Author

Imelda Zapata Garcia first published her poetry in the early 70s in the underground magazine El Caracol. Her first full poetry collection Cielitos was published by Gutenburg's Folly in 2005. Her second collection Beyond the Pyre, published by Wheelsong Books, followed in 2023. She has been an active and prolific writer and editor in several high-profile poetry communities and continues to publish her work in a variety of anthologies and through Wildfire Press and Wheelsong Books. She resides in San Antonio, Texas.

What they said

"This book broke me open, and it put something back together too." -Edward Vidaurre, Author of El Viejo & Publisher of Flower Song Press.

"Imelda is a true Chicana poet that grew up in the barrio. Her poetry expresses the plight of our raza. Her love for our cultura resonates in every one of her poems." - Efrain Gutierrez, Producer, Director of the Chicano movie, Please Don't Bury Me Alive.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GJ3MHWR6
• ISBN13: 9798244623123
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 164 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"