HOME Poetry Series: My Last Name

90 Dartmouth Street, Boston MA

Description

HOME consists of a featured reader and brief open mic every first Friday, followed by a writing workshop the following Saturday morning. This free series is curated by Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola and hosted by Anthony Febo. The poetry reading and open mic will be on May 7, 2021 at 7:30 p.m. The workshop will be on May 8, 2021 from 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. Learn more and register at boston.gov/poetry. The theme for April is "My Last Name", and the facilitator is Martín Espada. This is a generative workshop. Through the example of a great Afro-Cuban poet and the voices of the poets in workshop, we will explore ancestors, family, culture, history, memory, the known and unknown, the spoken and unspoken, elements that make up what we call “identity.” Poets will write on the spot, wherever they may be, then read their poems aloud—not for critical feedback, but for thunderous applause. The reading will be livestreamed via Haley House Bakery Cafe's Facebook page. Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York . He has published more than 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His forthcoming book of poems from Norton is called Floaters. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003), A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (2000), Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996), and City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (1993). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.