Martín Espada


Walt Whitman Birthplace Association 2012 Poet in Residence

Called“the Latino poet of his generation,” Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published more than fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems is called The Trouble Ball (Norton, 2011). The Republic of Poetry, a collection published by Norton in 2006, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A previous book of poems, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other books of poems include A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). The University of Michigan released his essay collection, The Lover of a Subversive is Also a Subversive, in 2010. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, the USA Simon Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His poems have appeared in the The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review and The Best American Poetry. His work has been widely translated; collections of poems have recently been published in Spain, Puerto Rico and Chile. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

WWBA's Past Poets-in-Residence

We are most proud of our sponsorship of a Poet-in-Residence Program, which each year, has honored, distinguished contemporary poets.

William Heyen-1981, Allan Planz-1982, Louis Simpson-1983, John Ciardi-1984, W.D.Snodgrass-1985, Galway Kinnell-1986, David Ignatow-1987, June Jordan-1988, Stanley Kunitz-1989, William Stafford-1990, Allen Ginsberg-1991, Sharon Olds-1992, Adrienne Rich-1993, Robert Bly-1994, Joseph Bruchac-1995, Diane Wakoski-1996, Galway Kinnell-1997 Mark Rudman-1998, Yevgeny Yevtushenko-1999, Marge Piercy-2000, Billy Collins-2001, Gary Soto-2002, Samuel Menashe-2003, Marvin Bell-2004, Nikki Giovanni-2005, Molly Peacock-2006, David Wagoner-2007, Alicia Ostriker-2008, X. J. Kennedy-2009, Mark Doty-2010, C.K. Williams-2011