Poetry in the Garden: Martin Espada and Joan Kwon Glass

Voices from Marginalized America - Immigrant Voices

July 14, 2025 · 7 p.m.

Walled Garden

Free

Commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with Poetry in the Garden's fifth season. Each Monday evening in July, nationally acclaimed poets will share works that explore how historically oppressed communities have been denied the Declaration of Independence's promised "inalienable rights."

On July 14, Poetry in the Garden: Voices from Marginalized America welcomes two poets whose work reflects the tenuous experience of immigrants and refugees: National Book Award winner Martin Espada, an outspoken advocate of Latino rights, and Joan Kwon Glass, a diasporic Korean American poet. The evening will open with a live performance of Brazilian jazz by Arthur Lipner and Nanny Asis. A book signing will follow.

Free for all! Bring a lawn chair or blanket to enjoy the readings, held in KTM&HC’s beautiful walled garden. In the event of inclement weather, the reading will move inside the Garden House. Ample parking on-site.

Poetry in the Garden 2025 is generously supported by Ridgefield Library, Books on the Common, The Fountain Inn, A.C.T. of Connecticut, and the Manhattanville University MFA in Creative Writing.

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. Author photo by Lauren Marie Schmidt.

Joan Kwon Glass's most recent poetry collection, Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms, is the winner of the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry, the 2025 Paterson Poetry Prive, and the Perugia Press Poetry Prize. A previous collection, Night Swim, won the 2021 Diode Book Prize. Joan's poems have been featued on NPR and in Poetry, The Flowdown, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, Tahoma Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 SWWIM Writer in Residence and has been a guest lecturer or visiting writer at Amherst College, Smith College, Wesleyan University, and less.