Martín Espada - Poetry 2003 - Key West Literary Seminar

Scheduled Poets
Kim Addonizio
John Ashbery
Lucille Clifton
Billy Collins
Robert Creeley
Martín Espada
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Carolyn Forché
Forrest Gander
Dan Gerber
Jane Hirshfield
Carolyn Kizer
Dorianne Laux
Semezdin Mehmedinović
Sharon Olds
Charles Simic
James Tate
Quincy Troupe
Derek Walcott
Richard Wilbur
C. D. Wright

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TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL
Key West Literary Seminar

the beautiful changes
poetry 2003

Martín Espada

Called "the Latino poet of his generation," Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. His fifth book of poetry, Imagine the Angels of Bread (W.W. Norton), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Another volume of poems, Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands (Curbstone Press), won both the Paterson Poetry Prize and the PEN/Revson Fellowship. The PEN/Revson judges were unanimous: "This is political poetry at its best...The greatness of Espada's art, like all great arts, is that it gives dignity to the insulted and the injured of the earth." His forthcoming collection, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002), will be published by Norton in spring 2003. Espada's poems have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Harper's, The Nation, The Pushcart Prize and The Best American Poetry. A book of essays, called Zapata's Disciple, was published by South End Press and received an Independent Publisher Book Award. Much of his writing arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. He is the editor of Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press, and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts Press), which won a Gustavus Myers Center Outstanding Book Award. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing, Latino poetry, and the work of Pablo Neruda. He is the Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts.