Poetry Unbound in Conversation — Martín Espada

Pádraig Ó Tuama (0:02)

Hi friends, Pádraig Ó Tuama here. Thanks very much for listening to Poetry Unbound. In between Poetry Unbound seasons, and we have season 11 that will start later in 2026, we have a whole host of interviews that I've done with poets over the last two years, Poetry Unbound in Conversation, we call them. I've loved the opportunity to talk to poets about their craft, how they see the world through the lens of poetry, and what this art form does for them. These Poetry Unbound in Conversation episodes deepened my curiosity about language and art, I trust they will for you too.

In this episode of Poetry Unbound in Conversation, you'll be hearing from Martín Espada. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Martín has written more than 20 books of poetry and non-fiction and translation. His collection Floaters won the National Book Award for Poetry and Martín is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This conversation was part of the Greenbelt Festival, an annual festival for arts, activism and belief in England. Greenbelt has an online component too and for this conversation Martín joined us from Amherst while I was at the festival in England. A special thanks to Paul Northup, Jane Cookson, Joanna Booth, Stream 7, Christian Aid and all the volunteers and staff and audience members at the Greenbelt Festival. And a thanks too to Garrett Sawyer and Jay Metcalfe at North Fire Recording Studio in Amherst, Massachusetts who hosted Martín for this conversation.

Brand new episodes of Poetry Unbound will be back later on this year, and there are plenty of Poetry Unbound and conversation episodes until then as well as a great archive. Here I am with Martín Espada.

Good afternoon, everybody. It's so nice to see you. Let me check with everybody who is here at the moment. Can you hear me? You can? Great. My name is Pádraig Ó Tuama and I am delighted to be in conversation today with Martín Espada and I'm going to introduce Martín. And you, I know, will be moved by the scope and breath and interests and artistry of his work.

Martín has published more than 20 books as a poet and editor and essayist and translator. He won the US National Book Award for Poetry in 2021 He's had books banned and outlawed because of their focus on justice and human rights. He is a former tenant lawyer, as we'll hear later on, from Greater Boston in the United States. And he works as a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Martín, you are so very welcome to Greenbelt.

Martín Espada (2:48)

Thank you very much, Pádraig.

Pádraig Ó Tuama (2:51)

I don't know where your camera is focused on at the moment, Martín, but there's about a hundred people here all in anoraks and waterproofs and umbrellas. Some, one or two are dry. Most people are not quite dry.

And we will be broadcasting this as a podcast later on through Greenbelt and through Poetry Unbound as well.

And you are among friends, Martín, even if you haven't been to Greenbelt before, people are excited to hear your work. So I want to start off by asking you a couple of questions so folks can get to know you a little bit. We're going to be hearing a lot of your poems today from across four collections. But I'd love to hear first, when did you first hear poetry?

Martín Espada (3:33)

I was not raised with poetry. I first heard poetry when an eighth grade English teacher forced me to recite the lyrics of the Macado out loud. It was not an auspicious start.

So that was the first time I heard it.

Pádraig Ó Tuama (3:52)

When did you think that you and poetry might have a longer conversation than that inauspicious start?

Martín Espada (4:00)

It was very gradual.

I did not study poetry in school and very much came to it on my own. I recall, in fact, that I was a terrible student. In fact, once flunked English in the eighth grade. And now I am a professor of English, which only shows you the strange directions your life can take.

Pádraig Ó Tuama (4:26)

Were there early poets who you turned to that surprised you about your connection with poetry? Or was it something that happened by yourself just turning to poetry without having guides in the form of books or voices that helped?

Martín Espada (4:40)

It really wasn't until I got to college, and more to the point dropped out of college, that I started to haunt the bookstores of Madison, Wisconsin.

I would eventually get a bachelor's degree in history from University of Wisconsin. But first I got a degree in the bookstores of that town and began to stumble across poetry and reinforced the idea that this was something for me. But even before that, there were attempts to introduce me to poetry, which in hindsight I realized meant a great deal. When I was about 20 years old, there was a family friend, a community organizer by the name of Luis Cardena Costa, who came to visit us and he handed me an anthology.