Statement from CantoMundo Leadership

As CantoMundo, under new leadership, prepares for the return of its annual in-person retreat, we want to recognize that the past few years have been difficult for our community. We’ve experienced shifts in leadership, the delay of in-person retreats, and words/(in)actions within the organization that have shaken the trust of our community. CantoMundo acknowledges that while our mission and vision commit us to being 'a home for all Latinx poets,’ these values were not always realized as fully as they could be.

As we restart our programs, we rededicate ourselves to serving Latinx poets and poetry across regional, aesthetic, ethnic, racial, linguistic, and gendered spectrums. We further pledge to work through all our policies and practices to be anti-racist, accessible, and intolerant of all homophobia and anti-trans rhetoric and to sustain a community in which all members are fully respected.

The leadership team has agreed upon the following measures as part of a thoughtful effort toward ensuring the instability previously felt will not be repeated:

1. We will seek dialogue with fellow CantoMundistas, especially within the AfroLatinx community, who wish to share concerns or experiences.

2. We will discuss together topics important to the health of CantoMundo at each leadership meeting. These may include but are not limited to sharing knowledge and resources, inviting guest speakers on the subject of diversity, equity, inclusion, and other relevant topics as they arise.

3. We will require implicit bias training (or other inclusivity training) ahead of the retreat for participants and leadership.

4. At the annual retreat, we will come up with a set of mutually agreed upon values to guide our future actions and from these update our Code of Care, which helps ensure the values we agree on will be enacted by our community moving forward.

Progress on these efforts will be addressed broadly during the opening circle at the 2024 retreat and shared in an email to all CantoMundistas the week afterward. Also, please know we always welcome your voices and can be reached at cantomundo@asu.edu or via the contact form on the website. Thank you in advance for your feedback, and we look forward to celebrating the retreat in 2024.

Warmly,

Jacqueline Balderrama, CantoMundo Director

Norma E. Cantú, CantoMundo Co-Founder & Advisory Board Member

Willie Perdomo, CantoMundo Faculty & Advisory Board Member

Pablo Miguel Martínez, CantoMundo Co-Founder & Advisory Board Member

CantoMundo - Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing Collaboration

The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU) and CantoMundo, a literary organization founded in 2009 to support Latinx poets and poetry, are pleased to announce a three-year collaboration to house CantoMundo at the Piper Center. As the largest public-serving university in the U.S. and a Hispanic-Serving Institution, ASU, which houses the Piper Center, is honored to help sustain CantoMundo’s mission and vision.

CantoMundo co-founders—Norma E. Cantú, Pablo Miguel Martínez, Celeste Mendoza, Deborah Paredez, and Carmen Tafolla—and Piper Center staff under director, Alberto Ríos, are excited to work together to honor and celebrate Latinx poetics and poets. The inaugural director of CantoMundo will be Jacqueline Balderrama, a Latinx poet with experience in literary program management; she will be based at the Piper Center. Balderrama will work in concert with CantoMundo co-founders as well as the national CantoMundo Advisory Board, which will be comprised of CantoMundo co-founders and other members.

The CantoMundo retreat will convene in June 2024 at the Piper Center in Tempe, AZ. Faculty and keynote lecturer will be announced by October 2023, and applications will open simultaneously.

CantoMundo and the Piper Center look forward to welcoming future CantoMundistas and to championing the rich diversity of Latinx poetry. Says CantoMundo co-founder Carmen Tafolla, “This collaboration represents a unique opportunity to support poets who can give voice to our great diversity of Latinx communities, and to enrich the national scene with a dynamic interchange and development of creative and conceptual poetic possibilities. Bringing together the resources of a major Hispanic-Serving Institution with the creative vision of a national pan-Latinx poetic organization deeply rooted in community empowerment and collaborative leadership will benefit all.” Piper Center Director, poet Alberto Ríos adds, “This is a working chance for training, support, and considerations of a legacy that earlier generations of Latinx poets and writers never had. This is the future.”

About CantoMundo: Through workshops, symposia, and public readings, CantoMundo provides a space for community development and critical analysis of Latinx literature in the awareness that Latinx poets remain underrepresented in the national literary landscape. CantoMundo strives to expand Latinx representation by supporting the professional development and community of Latinx poets across multiple linguistic, aesthetic, stylistic, and cultural spaces.

www.cantomundo.org

About Virginia G. Piper Center: Established in 2003 with a gift from the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at ASU is a non-academic university center dedicated to offering talks, readings, classes, workshops, and other literary events and programs for the larger community. We believe the power to document what is and to imagine what could be belongs to everyone. Through classes, events, and publications, we create brave spaces in which individuals can discover and claim their stories.

https://piper.asu.edu/cantomundo

Sor Juana Scholarship To Support Two CantoMundo Fellows

CantoMundo is happy to announce the recipients of the Sor Juana Scholarship for Latina CantoMundo Fellows, Carina del Valle Schorske and Nicole Sealey. The Scholarship, named for the 17th-century Mexican poet-scholar, will support the recipients’ stays at writing retreats this summer. This project is an important demonstration of CantoMundo’s commitment to supporting the work of Latinx poets while cultivating community at the local, regional, national, and international levels. With this Scholarship support, Carina del Valle Schorske will spend three weeks at Ucross, an artist residency program in Wyoming. There she will focus on revising her first book manuscript, as well as working on an essay on Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos. Nicole Sealey will use Scholarship funding to support a three-week stay at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida. During her residency, she will work on Country Music, a series of poems that explore what it means for her, a Black woman, to consider herself a countryman in the current political climate. The Sor Juana Scholarship for Latina CantoMundo Fellows is made possible by a grant from the Academy of American Poets.