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Wikipedia / Martín Espada

Martín Espada (born 1957) is a Puerto Rican-American poet, and a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches poetry. Puerto Rico has frequently been featured as a theme in his poems.

Life and career

Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was introduced to political activism at an early age by his father, Frank Espada, a leader in the Puerto Rican community and the civil rights movement. Espada received a B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a J.D. from Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts). For many years, he worked as a tenant lawyer and a supervisor of a legal services program. In 1982, Espada published his first book of political poems, The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, featuring photography by his father. This was followed by Trumpets from the Islands of their Eviction (1987) and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands. In 2001, he was named the first Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts. In 2018, Espada received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a lifetime achievement award given by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S. poet that carries a $100,000 prize. Espada was the first Latino recipient of the honor.

About his first and subsequent visits to meet family in Puerto Rico, Espada said it was "absolutely transformative", an "absolute revelation", "a process of self-discovery", and that "going there affirms you have a history". His poem "Coca Cola and Coco Frio" is about that.

In 2009, Espada performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

In 2021, Espada won the National Book Award for Poetry for his poem "Floaters" about two migrants, Oscar and his daughter Valeria, who drowned crossing the Rio Grande at the U.S. Border.

Espada is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.

Awards and honours

  • Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship in Poetry, 1984

  • National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, 1986

  • PEN/Revson Foundation Fellowship in Poetry, 1989

  • Paterson Poetry Prize, 1991

  • National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, 1992

  • Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant, 1996

  • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, 1997

  • Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, 1997

  • Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award, 1998

  • Pushcart Prize, 1999

  • Independent Publisher Book Award, 1999

  • Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, 2001

  • Antonia Pantoja Award, 2003

  • American Library Association Notable Book, 2004

  • Robert Creeley Award, 2004

  • Charity Randall Citation, 2005

  • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2006

  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 2007

  • San Francisco Chronicle Best Books, 2007

  • Library Journal Best Poetry Books, 2007

  • Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, 2007

  • Premio Fronterizo, 2007

  • National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, 2008

  • USA Simon Fellowship, 2010

  • Massachusetts Book Award, 2012

  • Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, 2012

  • International Latino Book Award, 2012

  • Walt Whitman Birthplace Poet in Residence, 2012

  • Busboys and Poets Award, 2014

  • Academy of American Poets Fellowship, 2018

  • Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, 2018

  • National Book Award for Poetry, 2021

Works

Books of poetry

  • The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, Waterfront Press, 1982,

  • Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction, Bilingual Press, 1987,

  • Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands, Curbstone Press, 1990,

  • City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, W.W. Norton, 1993,

  • Imagine the Angels of Bread, Norton, 1996,

  • A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen, Norton, 2000,

  • Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002 (W.W. Norton, 2003 US, 2004 UK)

  • La República de la Poesía (Mago Editores, Chile, 2007)

  • Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas, Smokestack Books, 2008,

  • La Tumba de Buenaventura Roig (Terranova Editores, Puerto Rico, 2008)

  • Soldados en el Jardín (El Gaviero Ediciones, Spain, 2009)

  • U.S.;, 2012, , UK

  • Floaters : Poems, W.W.Norton, 2021,

  • Jailbreak of Sparrows: Poems, Knopf, 2025,

Books of essays

  • Auf der Suche nach La Revolución (Agentur Machtwort, Germany, 2004)

As editor

  • Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination (Curbstone, 1994)

  • His Hands Were Gentle: Selected Lyrics of Víctor Jara (Smokestack, UK, 2012)

  • What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press, Curbstone, 2019)

In anthology

  • Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, University of Georgia Press, 2018,

  • Seeds of Fire: Contemporary Poetry from the Other U. S. A. Smokestack Books.

See also

References