Rhina P. Espaillat

Rhina Espaillat is a bilingual American poet.

Life
She was born in the Dominican Republic in 1932 and has lived in the United States since 1939. She taught English in the New York City public schools for many years, and retired to Newburyport, Massachusetts, where for more than a decade she has led a group of New Formalist poets known as the Powow River Poets.

Espaillat writes in both English and Spanish, and has become the most prominent translator of the poetry of Robert Frost into Spanish. She is the author of 11 poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The American Scholar, and many other journals.

Her work is included in many popular anthologies, including The Heath Introduction to Poetry (Heath 2000); The Muse Strikes Back (Story Line Press 1997); and In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the U.S. (Arte Publico Press 1994). She's also known for her English translations of the work of St. John of the Cross, which have been appearing in the American journal, First Things.

Recognition
Espaillat won the 1998 T.S. Eliot Prize for her collection Where Horizons Go (Truman State University Press) and the 2000 Richard Wilbur Award for Rehearsing Absence (University of Evansville Press). She is a two-time winner of the top award in formal poetry, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and was chosen to judge the 2012 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Contest.