when acentos started, i dreamed of bringing the BEST latino poets in the country to the bronx. step by step, poem by poem, feature by feature, we have been doing just that. emerging voices and established authors have come through and experienced just a lil bit of down home boogie down hospitality and i am extremely pleased to announce that you can add one more name to that list: Martín Espada.
ah hell yeah! martín has been a source of inspiration to acentos from jump street both in his respect for the word and the manner in which he translates that love of text to the stage.
lemme tell ya, i am JUICED for this one and am ready to leave for new mexico ready to climb the next ladder and make next year even BETTAH than this year.
love ya like if ya made mah dreams come true
MartÃn Espada
Sandra Cisneros says, “MartÃn Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors.” Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. His seventh collection of poems, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002) was published by Norton in 2003, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the year. An earlier collection, 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 poetry 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). He has received numerous awards, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships. His poems have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation, and The Best American Poetry. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released a CD of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). Much of his writing arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. 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.