EXCLUSIVE: Watch América Fuentes and Gloria Estefan Discuss Richard Blanco’s “Looking for The Gulf Motel”

Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will begin airing on public television stations nationwide (check local listings) and on the World Channel starting in January 2022 and continuing through the spring.

The series will also be available to stream on pbs.org, poetryinamerica.org, Amazon, and iTunes. The episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, which guests read and discuss with series creator Elisa New. Poetry in America encourages people from all walks of life to have conversations about poems. Episodes are designed for viewers to experience each poem in an immersive way by hearing, reading, and interpreting it alongside archival materials, vibrant animation, and footage shot at the locations it evokes.

Episode #302 (airing January 28) explores Richard Blanco’s “Looking for the Gulf Motel,” which transports readers to 1970s Florida, recalling a Cuban-American family’s vacations on the sparkling sands of Marco Island. Blanco and international superstar Gloria Estefan join Elisa New and a chorus of Cuban American adults in Miami and middle school students in New York City to reflect on family and what it means to call a place home.

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Support for Poetry in America is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Dalio Philanthropies, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, Deborah Hayes Stone and Max Stone. Season 3 is distributed to PBS stations nationwide by PBS Plus, with Seasons 1 & 2 distributed nationally by American Public Television.