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.