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“Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence” by Martín Espada, Floaters: Poems (USA 2021) by Martín Espada, Latino Migrants, Puerto Rican American Poet Martín Espada, Racism and Migration

Photo Credit: Official Website
My Poetry Corner January 2023 features the poem “Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence” by Martín Espada from his poetry collection Floaters, winner of the 2021 National Book Award in poetry. Espada, a poet, editor, essayist, and translator, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1957 to a politically engaged Puerto Rican family.
After studying history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Espada earned his law degree from Northeastern University-Boston. For many years (1987-1993), he was a tenant lawyer and legal advocate for low-income, Spanish-speaking tenants in Chelsea, Massachusetts, a town across the Tobin Bridge from Boston. Today, he teaches poetry and English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
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