"Humanize the Dehumanized: A Workshop on Immigration and Poetry" with National Book Award winner Martin Espada

As part of Poetry in the Garden's 2025 season, "Declarations 2025 - Resilience & Rage: Voices from Marginalized America," KTM&HC and Ridgefield Poet Laureate Emerita Barb Jennes are proud to host a series of poetry workshops in the month of July. Participants can learn, discuss, and create with some of the country's most prominent poetic voices.

On Monday, July 14, National Book Award winner Martin Espada's workshop will focus on the use of poetry to emphasize with, and advocate on behalf of, immigrants. From Martin: "We'll explore the reality that migrants share a common humanity with us. We'll dig down into our own immigrant histories and search for parallels with contemporary struggles. We'll confront the fact that, historically, the same people others would deport have always done the 'dirty work' in our country. We'll read poems and, not least, we'll write in the garden." 

Workshops are open to writers of all experience levels/genres. Registration is limited to 25 participants per workshop, so reserve your spot early!

Tickets go on sale this spring. Special discounted rates are available for high school and college students - inquire at info@keelertavernmuseum.org. 

Image: Lauren Marie Schmidt

Martín Espada has published more than 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His newest book of poems is Jailbreak of Sparrows; his previous book, Floaters, won the 2021 National Book Award and a Massachusetts Book Award. His other collections include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed, The Republic of Poetry, and Alabanza, the title poem of which has been widely anthologized. Espada has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at UMass-Amherst.