Plymouth Magazine-Summer26-DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 5
Poetry Like Bread: The Craft of Poetry
in Conversation with Martín Espada
By Karen Downing (she/her)
“This is the poem as an act of political
imagination, the poet not merely as
prosecutor, but as visionary.”
– Martin Espada
“Poetry Like Bread: The Craft of Poetry
in Conversation with Martin Espada,”
a workshop facilitated by Pastor Luke,
brought ten participants together to
explore the craft of poetry. Using poems
by Martín Espada, the featured poet for
Poetry Palooza! 2026, participants treated
his work as mentor texts for their own
writing. The workshop was sponsored
by Welcoming Migrants and the AntiRacism Committee, underscoring
Espada’s themes of social justice.
Martin Espada, the featured poet for
Poetry Palooza!, has published more
than 20 books as a poet, editor, essayist
and translator. His book, Floaters, won
the National Book Award for Poetry. A
former tenant lawyer in Boston, Espada is
a professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst.
For the Plymouth workshop, Pastor Luke
guided the group through key elements
of poetic craft, including concretion
and abstraction, persona and voice, and
repetition. Participants practiced these
techniques in weekly drafts and received
feedback from the group. Pastor Luke
also met individually with writers to
discuss their revision process.
Plymouth member Sarah Anne Sutter
said, “The poetry workshop was an
experience I would never have participated
in if not for Plymouth. Having limited
experience reading and writing poetry,
this was a unique opportunity to learn
how others approach poems and to try my
hand at writing poems with intentionality.
It was a wonderful experience all around.
The workshop’s emphasis on craft gave
participants a scaffolding for exploring
their own lives and experiences. Their
poems captured both personal moments
and broader human truths, from the
demands of working in a care facility
to encounters that revealed a sense
of sisterhood among diverse women.
Though less overtly political than many
of Espada’s poems, the writers used
poetic imagination to make sense of
their worlds and to give voice to rich
human experience.
Espada’s poetry is topical using news
events as grounding points for larger
cultural reflections. In “Stone Hammered
to Gravel,” Espada dedicates the poem
to Dennis Brutus, a poet and political
activist imprisoned in South Africa in
1963. The lines of the poem, “Never tell
a poet: Don’t say that,” underscores the
hammer-like quality of resistance.
Espada, in addition to writing his own
collections, has anthologized the work
of others, most notably in “Poetry Like
Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination”.
The anthology, like the workshop
at Plymouth, takes its title from the
poem “Like You,” by Roque Dalton, a
Salvadoran poet and revolutionary who
was assassinated after being accused of
spying for Americans. In it, Dalton ends
with the lines: “I believe the world is
beautiful / and that poetry, like bread, is
for everyone.”
Karen Downing has been a Plymouth
member for over 50 years. She is a retired
teacher from Valley High School and
is working with CultureALL’s Open
Book program. You can reach her at
downingk4465@gmail.com.
POETRY PALOOZA
Poetry Palooza! in Des Moines
is a free, three-day festival that
celebrates poetry through
performances, workshops, open
mics, and the Iowa Poetry Slam
Championship. This event, a
revival of the Des Moines National
Poetry Festival founded by Tom
Lyner and Plymouth member
Jim Autry, features national and
local poets to foster community
and creative expression.
Irish poet and theologian Pádraig
Ó Tuama will be the featured
poet for Poetry Palooza! 2027.
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