Summer Poetry Gathering 2025 featuring Martín Espada

Chicago

800 West Buena Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60613, United States

About the Event

Join the Chicago Poetry Center for the 2025 Summer Poetry Gathering featuring poet, essayist, translator, and attorney, Martín Espada.

On Wednesday June 18, join the Chicago Poetry Center for our annual summer celebration!In line with CPC's anti-censorship roots and wrapping up our 50th anniversary year, our 2025 Summer Poetry Gathering headlining poet is none other than Martín Espada. Martín is the author of more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator; 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.On this night of community celebration, we will also be presenting CPC's Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Excellence in Teaching to Leslie Reese, Timothy David Rey, and Joy Young.Also, don't miss your chance to bid on amazing items through our in-person-only silent auction!Doors open at 6 p.m. -- Libations and bites, mingling, silent auction

6:30 p.m. -- Community open mic in the performance space, community hang time in the lobby and library

7 p.m. -- Awards presentation and headliner reading

8 p.m. -- Community gathering with book signing, more libations and bites

This event is completely free, but pre-registration is required.

Space is limited, register today!This event will also be livestreamed -- to watch from wherever you are, just click on over to this link on the 18th!

Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. His latest book of poems Jailbreak of Sparrows was published with Knopf in 2025. His previous book, Floaters, won the National Book Award for Poetry and a Massachusetts Book Award. His poetry collections from W.W. Norton include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006), Alabanza (2003) and Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). 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. 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. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

ABOUT OUR FEATURED POET

ABOUT THE CHICAGO POETRY CENTER

The Chicago Poetry Center connects people and poetry, equitably engages poets with communities, and advances creative literacy in the city and beyond. We envision and work to create a fair and verdant world rooted in artistic expression, human connection, and boundless imagination. We believe that poetry illuminates our individual and shared humanity, fueling thriving lives and healthy communities.For more information, please visit www.poetrycenter.org.