Meet Paul Martinez-Pompa

Martinez-Pompa joined CantoMundo in 2025. His publications include Pepper Spray, My Kill Adore Him, and Domestic Corpse, which was released in October. 2025. He spent time with poet and ASU instructor Cecilia Savala to discuss his work, the joy of finding a writing community, and the value of dope music.

CantoMundo: Why did you decide to apply to Canto Mundo?

PAUL MARTINEZ-POMPA: Writing is a solitary, isolating process (and necessarily so), but working in isolation for too long can be detrimental. I applied to CantoMundo to seek support and offer support to other writers on their respective writerly journeys.

CM: How has being involved with CM influenced your work? Your practices? Your engagement with your communities?

PMP: The CantoMundo workshop, under the guidance of Yesenia Montilla, was an intensive, generative writing practice. Under Yesenia's guidance and support, I was pushed beyond the limits of what I normally do during my own writing sessions. I discovered that I am capable of more than I realized. Raina J. Leon's workshop reminded me to dig deeper into my own personal, familial historical archives and surface with wisdom and light found in seemingly dark but revealing spaces.

Also, CantoMundo renewed my faith in fellow poets, as I was introduced to a cohort of beautiful souls — supportive, accepting peers.

CM: Do you write with a specific audience in mind? If so, who do you most want to reach with your writing?

PMP: My ideal reader is someone who reads carefully, creatively, and imaginatively, someone who takes their time with the poem and is intrigued by the subtle nuances of language, someone who is willing to participate in the creation of meaning as they work their way through the poem.

CM: Who are your literary influences?

PMP: Ana Castillo, Paul Celan, Li-Young Lee, Julia Story, Roberto Harrison.

CM: What are you currently reading, or what’s the best thing you’ve read recently?

PMP: Chad Heltzel's Recordings of Dead Languages, Simon Sedillo's Weapons; Drugs & Money (Crime, Corruption, and Community Based Liberation in the US/Mexico Neoliberal Military Political Economy); Diana Marie Delgado's Tracing the Horse.

CM: When you’re not writing, or the writing is not coming, what do you do?

PMP: I write anyway. I think it's important to approach writing the same way one approaches any kind of exercise. Most of the time, you're not going to feel your best, but you owe it to yourself to put in the time anyway.  Reading something new, rereading something you've read a thousand times before, looking really closely at a tree, or jotting down a word or fragment that has meaning to you--that all counts as writing.

CM: MFA or no MFA? 

PMP: Did I get an MFA? Yes. Do I recommend an MFA? Sure, but it's not necessary.  I learned how to be a much stronger reader in my MFA program. That continues to play a vital role in my writing craft. MFA programs can potentially be supportive environments, but can also be detrimental. I was very fortunate to have an amazing cohort of poets admitted the same year I was, who went through workshops and lit classes with me. I learned far more from them than from any other source in grad school. Ultimately, we teach ourselves how to write by reading and looking very, very closely at poems we love.

CM: What can you share about your next project?

PMP: Even though it's fashionable to do so, I don't typically work with a pre-planned project in mind. I love writing poems, period. Eventually, a bunch of poems might reveal themselves as a project later. I've been working on collage pieces that keep morphing into poems that maybe aren't collage at all. I'm playing with language and falling in love with poetry all over again. My project is to simply read and write poetry and listen to dope music.