**SENSATIVE CONTENT WARNING: This episode references childhood sexual abuse. If you or someone you know needs support, call or text the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-422-4453. 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 National Poetry Month 2026 bonus episode features teen poet Moth Allen reading his poem "Your Hands."

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: info@poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

**SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING: This episode references suicide. If you or someone you know needs support, call or text 988 in the U.S. 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 National Poetry Month 2026 bonus episode features highschooler Bella Phinney reading her poem called "My Friend."

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: info@poetrymedicineforthesoul.com

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. This National Poetry Month 2026 bonus episode features Emily Pérez reading "Wildlife" by Ellen Bass.

The poem "Wildlife" by Ellen Bass is available to read on the Poetry Foundation website.

Emily Pérez is the author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize and a finalist for a Colorado Book Award. She co-edited The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, also a finalist for a Colorado Book Award. A CantoMundo fellow and Ledbury Critic, she has received grants and scholarships from Hedgebrook, the Community of Writers, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, and Summer Literary Seminars. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her poems and criticism have appeared in journals including Copper Nickel, Fairy Tale Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, Diode, RHINO, The Guardian, LARB, The Georgia Review, and DIAGRAM. She is a high school teacher in Denver where she lives with her family. Learn more at emilyperez.org.

Ellen Bass’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Learn more at ellenbass.com.

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: info@poetrymedicineforthesoul.com