Taos SOMOS Hosts Poet Martín Espada in an April Online Reading and Workshop
SOMOS Writer’s Showcase presents Martín Espada for an online reading on Friday 4/12/24 ($8 SOMOS members; $10 nonmembers) and an online workshop on Saturday 4/13/24 ($75 SOMOS members; $85 non-members). Both events will happen via Zoom and the link will be sent to participants after registration.
“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, winner of the 2021 National Book Award. 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.” About the workshop:
“This is a generative workshop. Through the example of a great AfroCuban poet, Nicolás Guillén, and the voices of the poets in workshop, we will explore ancestors, family, culture, history, language, memory, the known and the unknown, the spoken and the unspoken, elements that make up what we call “identity.” Poets will write on the spot, then read their poems aloud— not for critical feedback, but only for thunderous applause.”
To register: Reading: https:// somostaos.org/calendar
Workshop: https://somostaos.org/ classes-workshops