Holly Iglesias: National Poetry Month 2026

**Content Warning: This episode features a poem about a mass shooting. Please take care while listening.** Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. This episode features Holly Iglesias reading "The Hispanic Invasion of Texas," by María Esquinca, from the collection Where Heaven Sinks.  María Esqunica's poem, "This Hispanic Invasion of Texas," can be found on the Michigan Quarterly Review website. Holly Iglesias has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Edward Albee Foundation. Her poetry collections are Souvenirs of Shrunken World, Angles of Approach, and Sleeping Things. She is working on an intergenerational memoir in prose fragments that is tentatively entitled Theories of Flight. María Esquinca is a Xicana educator, poet and journalist. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She currently teaches newcomers who are recent immigrants at San Francisco International High School. Her debut collection, Where Heaven Sinks was the 2024 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize winner, and was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera. Learn more at: mariaesquinca.org   This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website for more episodes: https://poetry-medicine-for-the-soul.simplecast.com/Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Get in touch with us at: [email protected]