Whether as an award-winning poet, political activist, tenant lawyer, bouncer, bartender or gas station attendant, Martín Espada’s aim has always remained the same: “To put the struggling front and center, to speak for those who cannot be heard.”

Winner of the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Book Award in Poetry for “The Trouble Ball” and Pulitzer Prize finalist for his 2006 collection “The Republic of Poetry,” Espada was the last artist to present in this year’s Spring Readers Series on Tuesday, April 23.

Espada’s work is heavily concerned with the struggles of the underrepresented and the working class. Growing up in Brooklyn’s Linden Projects, Espada was introduced to political activism at an early age by his father Frank Espada, a leader in the Puerto Rican community and the Civil Rights Movement. As a young man, Espada traveled “to-and-fro, mostly fro” around the U.S. and worked several different jobs, including stints as a bouncer, bartender, salesman, gas station attendant, telephone solicitor and clerk.

Espada has since published more than 15 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His work is widely translated and has been circulated in Spain, Puerto Rico and Chile. Currently, Espada is working as an English professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Espada studied history at University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned his law degree from Northeastern University. For many years, Espada worked as a tenant lawyer and legal advocate, publishing his first collection of political poems, entitled “The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero,” in 1985. Eventually, he gave up his law career to pursue his passion for writing and teaching.

“For one thing, I write poetry because I like to tell stories,” Espada said. “But there’s something about poetry that saves me, gives me energy. To be a poet is to be an advocate for those who have been silenced. Our words can empower the silenced to speak.”

Indeed, Espada’s poetry delves deep into the lives of “the silenced” across the world, from the victims of political corruption in El Salvador and the prisoners of the Chilean Revolution to those suffering under social inequality in the U.S.

“The trauma, the suffering of others is something that many people try to ignore,” Espada said. “The least you can do is listen.”

Unfortunately, not all people are willing to listen, and Espada himself has been censored.

“I used to be an NPR poet,” Espada said. “But I was censored by ‘All Things Considered’ and National Public Radio because I wrote a poem for them about Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal was an African American political activist who was convicted of murdering white police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1982. His original death sentence was dropped when prosecutors announced that “inadequate representation, the disturbing prospect of executing an innocent person, racism and geographic disparities are undeniably present in the state’s justice system.” During the trial, NPR canceled Espada’s reading under pressure from the right, particularly from the Fraternal Order of Police and Senator Robert Dole.

“You have to be persistent,” Espada said. “You have to keep pressing on to get the word out there. You may very well be the only voice for these people. Sometimes that means letting in the ghosts.”