The Eagle-Tribune Spotlights Calls for Biden to Name Rhina Espaillat Inaugural Poet

At the Eagle-Tribune (a local newspaper covering the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire), Jim Sullivan writes about growing calls for president-elect Joe Biden to name Rhina Espaillat his inaugural poet. (Espaillat is a resident of nearby Newburyport, Massachusetts.) "Espaillat has lived in the city for 30 years," Sullivan writes. "She has authored 17 books of poetry, was the youngest poet to be inducted into the Poetry Society of America when she was 16, and was a founding member of the Powow River Poets." Further: 

“I started writing in English when I was 8 and poetry in Spanish when I was 4,” Espaillat said. “So poetry has been a part of my life for all of my life. My grandmother was a poet, so I heard it from the cradle and there were a lot of poets around when I was growing up.”

Espaillat added that her gratitude to the U.S. is mixed with a healthy dose of respect as well.

“This is probably the greatest country in the world,” she said. “But I have a feeling that this country wants to be so much more that it has been over the past few years. It wants to be even more special than it is and I think maybe this is the chance for that.”

Powow River Poets themselves, Leslie Monsour and Alfred Nicol recently authored an open letter to Biden asking him to consider Espaillat as his inaugural poet. The letter was signed by more than 70 poets and authors from New Hampshire to California and published in the Marginalia section of the Los Angeles Review of Books (Read the letter at https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/inaugural-poet-an-open-letter-to-president-elect-joe-biden/.)

“It was the Powwow River Poets who ganged up on me and plotted this whole thing,” Espaillat said.

Monsour and Nicol make the case in the letter that Espaillat’s personal history and body of work make her an excellent addition to Biden’s inauguration.

“You simply could make no better choice than Rhina P. Espaillat, and you will be ever grateful that you have brought her work into your world,” the letter states.

Read more at the Eagle-Tribune.