By Dylan Hackett, Staff Writer

iterature truly came alive at the L= Westminster campus last

Wednesday, as famed Brooklyn- born Puerto Rican poet Martin Espada read some of his work to a small gathering of staff and students. Espada’s gruff but gentle voice gave his poetry spirit and passionate vibrancy

‘as he delivered poems from three

of his works: Alabanza (2003), the Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Republic of Poetry (2006), and his latest, The Trouble Ball (2011). His poems reflected his growth from a boy born to the housing projects of Brooklyn who trained to become a lawyer, to his current life as a poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

It was his first time in Vancouver, coming to speak this weekend at the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference and the Vancouver International Writers Festival commemorating the 125" anniversary of the city. Despite

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his commanding presence, Espada was not without a sense of humour. His acerbic wit withstanding jetlag, Espada delivered a poem about a forced love affair with cockroaches, appropriately titled “My Cockroach Lover.” Caressing his steel wool-like beard, he read: “One night I dreamed/ a giant roach/ leaned over me, / brushing my face/ with kind antennae/ and whispered, ‘I love you.’/ I awoke slapping myself.”

Describing himself as a “poet advocate,” Espada’s Brooklyn background inspired him to write many pieces about the working class and poems with political undertones. One of these pieces, “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100,” is an ode to the immigrant workers who died in the World Trade Centre on 9/11: “Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen/ could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations: / Equador, Mexico, Republica Dominica, | Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.” Espada read to the rapt audience.

He then described his first visit to his father’s homeland of Puerto Rico as a child; “I had never seen such a beautiful place in my life. There is nothing like seeing it for the first time.” He captured the essence of his childhood visit in the poem “Coca Cola and Coco Frio”: “The boy tilted the green shell overhead/ and drooled coconut milk down his chin; / suddenly, Puerto Rico was not Coca-Cola/ or Brooklyn, and neither was he.”

Espada is a bilingual poet who writes many of his pieces in Spanish and English, oftentimes in the same poem, as he explains “The two languages co-exist in my mind and influence in subtle ways. I enjoy bouncing the two languages off each other the way they bounce in my head.”

With his poetry career spanning thirty years, Espada has been published in fifteen different languages, including Thai, Hindi, Arabic, and Turkish. “I’m published in Turkish. Why? Because I have an assertive translator in Turkey,” said Espada, explaining the realities

of the publishing world of poetry. “Translators are the unsung heroes of poetry. They will sometimes fight to the death over one word.”

When asked about truths in poems, Espada replied, “There’s always poetic license, whether you realize it or not— it’s a function of memory.”

Espada had command over his works and the audience that night, and provided exemplary advice for young poets: “Because of the nature of my life I often write in transit,” he told the room. “Poetry is not something that happens on Mount Olympus.”

Be sure to attend this week’s Literature Alive event, featuring writer and cartoonist Sarah Leavitt.

What: Literature Alive with Sarah Leavitt Where: Douglas College, New West campus, Room 2203

When: Wednesday October 26 @ 12 p.m. Cost: Free!