The second day of the 2021 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival includes a poetry workshop; open mic readings; readings by and discussions with contributors to The Poetry of Capital (an anthology released in 2021), moderated by the editors Ben Grossberg and Clare Rossini; and a musical performance. We conclude with presenting poet Martín Espada reading from his latest book, Floaters, as well as his 9/11 poem “Alabanza.”
The Festival will take place on Hill-Stead’s expansive and picturesque West Lawn, allowing attendees to be safely socially distanced. Seating will be limited, but a livestream ticket option is also available for those who may prefer to tune in from the comfort of home. Your admission allows you to enjoy all of the day’s activities (does not include admission to the workshop).
Please bring a blanket, chairs, and a picnic if you like.
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His new book of poems from Norton is called Floaters. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), and Alabanza (2003). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program, outlawed by the state of Arizona, and reissued by Northwestern. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.