featuring Martín Espada
Check back soon to purchase tickets!
The day will include poem-writing workshops, a panel discussion, and readings by contributors to The Poetry of Capital, an anthology released in 2021. The focus of these events will be the way poets and poems grapple with money, from high school summer jobs to income inequality to national economic crises, from local farmer’s markets and tag sales to the global stock market.
The Festival will take place on Hill-Stead’s expansive and picturesque West Lawn, allowing attendees to be safely socially distanced in clearly marked pods. Bring a blanket, chairs, and a picnic. Inspired by the surroundings, many attendees take the opportunity to write their own poetry and prose, lingering after dusk to finish their poems and conversations.
Seating will be limited, but a live-stream ticket option will also be available for those who may prefer to tune in from the comfort of home.
Schedule to come
For additional poetry events, see our Calendar.
Tickets
In-person ticket Ticket link coming soon!
Livestream ticket Ticket link coming soon!
For reserved seating with chairs and VIP parking, please join The Live Poets Society.
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His new 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), and Alabanza (2003). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The title poem of his collection Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program, outlawed by the state of Arizona, and reissued by Northwestern. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Accessibility at the SGPF
Hill-Stead is proud to make the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival accessible. Wheelchair ramps are available, and many volunteers are on hand to assist the mobility impaired. An accessible section is reserved close to the main stage, and a large-print edition of the program book is available on-site.
Hill-Stead makes every effort to ensure that deaf and hard-of-hearing people feel welcome. ASL interpreters are provided at the main Poetry stage (depending on interpreter availability) or by request in advance by calling 860-677-4787 x111.