First Edition
The original of the collection—poetry presented alongside its visual art.
View editionPoet · Author · Kansan
Language for what
resists being named.
Claudio A. Rubio-Valdes writes cryptic, image-rich poetry shaped by ambiguity, unconventional syntax, and the belief that a poem may ask more than it answers.
“I want to be an impressionable man first—and let my poetry be something I did rather than what I was known for.”
The collection
Four ways into the same sky.
Each edition of Soft Clouds Between Birds approaches the work differently— as poetry, visual art, physical object, and continuing record.
Written Edition
An intentionally handwritten and elusive rendering of the collection as an art object.
View edition
Extended Edition
A living edition that grows and changes as the body of work continues.
View edition
Unpublished work in development
I Have a Date on Thursday
A developing work of fiction centered on interiority, routine, human connection, and the quiet changes contained within an ordinary week.
Selected lines
A poetry of atmosphere, interruption, and return.
The work favors interpretation over instruction. Archaic language, fractured images, and unfinished meanings invite the reader to participate in making sense of the poem. Valdes writes within the tradition of hermetic poetry, allowing meaning to remain private, layered, and resistant to immediate explanation.
To right of yonder’s cattle.
“The ol’ hE of humor Leapt free— ”
No them is afar any that,
And here is taken known,
A Line is as Complex
About the author
Claudio A. Rubio-Valdes
Claudio A. Rubio-Valdes is an American poet and author based in Topeka, Kansas. His writing explores the distance between private meaning and shared language.
Valdes is the author of Soft Clouds Between Birds, a collection issued in four distinct editions. His poetry uses ambiguity, visual association, archaic vocabulary, and unconventional constructions to create work that reveals itself slowly.
His broader life and service inform a literary practice concerned with restraint, vulnerability, growth, and the impressions people leave behind. He is based in Topeka, Kansas, and continues to develop poetry and longer-form fiction.
A Latino author and graduate of Topeka High School, Valdes attends Washburn University, where he continues his education in Legal Studies. His education complements a literary interest in language, interpretation, and the structures through which people understand one another.
Kansas remains central to Valdes’s sense of place and belonging. He holds a deep affection for its open horizons, quiet beauty, changing seasons, enduring communities, and the worth found in landscapes and lives too often passed over without notice.
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