Martin Espada II

Poetry

Interviewed by: Angela Elam

Catalog Number(s): 20180914, 20150724, 20140926

Interview Year(s): 2013

In the second part of this public presentation by Martín Espada at the Kansas City Public Library, the former tenant lawyer talks about how he was able to transfer his advocacy from the justice system to poetry, giving voice to those who are otherwise silenced. After a fresh reading of the title poem from Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (that varies quite a bit from his 2005 New Letters on the Air recording), he discusses this post 9/11 poem as well as the elegiac tendencies in his collection The Trouble Ball, which won three poetry awards in 2012. He also shares poems about the human rights struggle of our time–immigration.