Each year, SCR presents the Ronald Moran Prize in Fiction and Poetry for the best fiction and poetry of the year. Our poetry winner for this year was María Esquinca, with her poem “Dream In Which I Return Home” from SCR 56.2
Maria Esquinca is a Xicana fronteriza and an abolitionist. She was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. Her manuscript “Where Heaven Sinks” was selected as the winner of the 2024 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. It was selected by former U.S Poet Laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera. Her poetry has appeared in Waxwing, Michigan Quarterly Review, South Carolina Review, Best New Poets, and others.
Here’s what Maria has to say about her poem:
“I was trying to use dreams, or dream logic to unearth childhood memories. The way the images shift in the poem, from the moon, to the bedroom, to the shadows, mimic the way we dream. The way images shift with no explanation. I think subconsciously I was trying to write about my childhood, but I wasn’t ready to write about it, so this was an attempt to get at something larger. I was also inspired at the time by “Ghost Of” by Diane Khoh, and the way we can be haunted by family, and family memories, and so there’s some of that too.”
