Eastern celebrates 25 years of Willimantic’s Julia de Burgos Park

Twenty-five years after an Eastern Connecticut State University student and professor successfully lobbied for the beautification and naming of a Willimantic pocket park, the University fittingly hosted its silver anniversary on Sept. 26. The celebration of Julia de Burgos Park brought together poetry, music, history, and community members to honor a public space dedicated to a prolific but often overlooked poet.

At first blush, Julia de Burgos Park — located at 319 Jackson Street — is a bit confounding. The Puerto Rican poet who died at 39 years old never lived in Connecticut, and there are no indications that she visited the Constitution State, never mind Willimantic specifically. A deeper look, however, reveals a connection that came about more than 40 years after her death. In 1997, Curbstone Press, a Willimantic-based publisher founded by Eastern Professor Alexander “Sandy” Taylor and his wife Judy Doyle, released “Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos,” which collected over 200 of her works in one volume, translated into English.

Around that time, Juan Perez ’03 interned for Curbstone, which sat across from an ill-kept piece of land on Jackson Street. He told the New York Times in 2001, just after the Julia de Burgos Park opening: “Sandy and I used to sit here and think, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a poetry park over there?”

When Curbstone published “Song of the Simple Truth,” Perez focused on her for the park’s name explaining, “It’s a Latina name, so it’s a way of telling the rest of the community we are here to stay.”

The connection between Eastern and the park did not end with its naming. According to Professor Ricardo Perez, Colectivo Mestizal, a local organization made up of Eastern faculty and Willimantic residents founded in 2003, honored the park annually until the group’s disbanding around 2014.

“We would coordinate in celebrating the Julia de Burgos Park's anniversary every year in the last week of September, because [it] was founded and dedicated on Sept. 22. So Eastern wasn’t just involved in its founding. For years, it ensured its annual commemoration.”

Opening the University’s doors to the park’s anniversary event — relocated to Shafer Hall Auditorium due to inclement weather — boasted remarks from Mayor Tom DeVivo, Town Manager Robert Zarnetske, Senator Mae Flexer, and State Rep. Susan Johnson. They were joined by poetry readings led by acclaimed local and national poets, an open mic for the public, and music from Bentetú and Arnaldo Rivera. It represents an excellent step in the University’s recommitment to connecting with the larger community, according to Professor Perez.

“It’s important to me as a faculty member and Willimantic resident that Eastern … maintains its presence in the community,” he asserts. “I think [we] are trying now, especially with this new administration, to reconnect ties between the University and the local community, not just Puerto Rican community, but with Windham and Willimantic in general.”

He concluded, “We have such a large and vibrant role we can play.”