In “Bardic Gifts and Epic Tales,” the Newburyport Literary Festival (April 25-27, 2025) will feature award-winning Puerto Rican poet Martín Espada and Dominican American poet and translator Rhina Espaillat, with her Poetry Soup students from Newburyport High School, on Saturday, April 26, 3:45pm, at the Central Congregational Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Description of “Bardic Gifts and Epic Tales”: Beginning as a teacher in the New York City schools, Rhina P. Espaillat has, for many decades, shared her bardic gifts and inspired others. In good turn, Newburyport High’s award-winning Poetry Soup students will regale Rhina before she steps forward to charm and amuse us with wit and wisdom from her rich and ample trove of published work. Life can’t be more rich or full than this, can it? But wait! Here comes National Book Award–winner Martín Espada, whose Jailbreak of Sparrows begins as a portrait of the artist and unfurls to a saga, an epic tale of making good against all the odds, as funny and wild as an episode of Saturday Night Live, as tender as Leaves of Grass.
Presenters: NHS Poetry Soup, Rhina P. Espaillat, Martín Espada
Moderators: Deborah Szabo and José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His new book of poems is called Jailbreak of Sparrows (2025). His last book of poems, Floaters (2021), won the National Book Award and a Massachusetts Book Award. Other collections of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), and Alabanza (2003). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A former tenant lawyer, Espada teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Dominican-born Rhina P. Espaillat is a much-honored Newburyport bilingual poet, essayist, short-story writer, translator, and educator. Her most recent book is her translation from Spanish to English of the personal poetry of Dominican poet José Mármol, Sketch of Flight (UME, República Dominicana, 2022). Her published work includes poetry, essays, and short stories, appearing in over 100 magazines and anthologies. She is a founding member of two long-lived, active poetry workshops: NYC’s Fresh Meadows Poets and Newburyport’s Powow River Poets. Honors include the T. S. Eliot Prize in Poetry, Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, Richard Wilbur Award, Oberon Poetry Prize.
Started by two Newburyport High School students, Poetry Soup has been simmering for thirty years. During that time hundreds of young poets have participated in the monthly readings that include… an open mike for students and an adult featured speaker. Thanks to visits from exceptional mentors, students have been inspired to find their voices and recognize the power of their words. [. . .]
For more information, see https://newburyportliteraryfestival.org/2025-schedule-of-events/
In “Bardic Gifts and Epic Tales,” the Newburyport Literary Festival (April 25-27, 2025) will feature award-winning Puerto Rican poet Martín Espada and Dominican American poet and translator Rhina Espaillat, with her Poetry Soup students from Newburyport High School, on Saturday, April 26, 3:45pm, at the Central Congregational Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Description of “Bardic Gifts
