Ten years of workshops, conferences, drafts and revisions have culminated in the new Círculo de poetas & Writers Anthology. Círculo (circle) is an organization committed to supporting the literary vision of a wide range of voices, as president Adela Najarro explained. Círculo’s Anthology allows readers “to gather new knowledge about what it is like to live on this planet,” she said.
The book’s second launch is Tuesday, October 27 at Satori Arts, 7 pm; poets included in the book will read there and at a series of events announced on Círculo’s website.
There is much to be celebrated in the Anthology. Five poet laureates are represented in the book, including Marie Boucher, poet laureate of Monterey County, whose poems map the intersection between the natural and human world. Watsonville poet laureate and Cabrillo English instructor Victoria Bañales has two poems in the anthology.
The writers in the book have been honored by numerous awards. Najarro’s book, Variations in Blue, received an American Book Award, while Kadiri Vaquer Fernández’s new book, Si no vuelve el verano (If Summer Never Returns), received a 2026 Spanish language book award from the International Latino Book Awards (ILBA). Fernández is a Puerto Rican poet who is a professor of Spanish at MPC. The poems in her book offer glimpses of a future in which the world has to be rebuilt from the ashes of the present; as Fernández noted, the poetry is “a means of defying the ferocity of the times.”
Bañales’s new book, The Sun Will Not Harm You by Day, Nor the Moon by Night, received two awards from the ILBA. The title comes from Psalm 121, and the book itself is a kind of psalm of resistance and regeneration, drawing on traditional and ancestral figures—among them her abuelas (grandmothers) and La Virgen de Guadalupe. In “Ánimas Solas,” a term which refers literally to the souls in purgatory, the souls emerge as the poet searches family photo albums and scold her as she tries to bring her grandparents’ stories to life. “’No, no, no, that’s not how the story goes,’ they interrupt.”
Bañales describes herself as “a social justice Catholic” whose work draws on multiple traditions and makes them her own. As she put it, “Whatever sounds good to my soul, I’m all there.”
Organizations like Círculo are essential in these times, explained Bañales, because “the colonial residues in publishing can make writers of color reluctant to enter that world.” To counter that reality, Círculo puts on an annual conference at the Museum of Art and History, where members conduct workshops to support the generation of new work.
At the same time, Círculo honors its literary ancestry, bringing one Elder to the conference every year to be celebrated. This year, Bay Area poet Avotcja was the honoree; Avotcja has for over 50 years been writing, composing, performing and teaching at the intersection of poetry and music.
One of the Anthology’s literal ancestors, the late Santa Cruz poet Francisco X. Alarcón, is honored in Odilia Galván Rodríguez’s “Achcauhtli” (Leader). Alarcón was one of the founders of Círculo along with poet Lucha Corpi, and other Northern California writers. Rodríguez describes Alarcón as “the King of Hummingbirds”: “…there is no place you can go/ where the wind does not whisper/your name/ Its secrets in your ear.”
Rodríguez’s Prickly Pear Press published the Círculo anthology.
Multilingual whispers from not only literary, family and mythical predecessors but circles of local and national poets infuse the Anthology, along with the breath of writers to come.
The Círculo de poetas & Writers Anthology is available at Bookshop Santa Cruz, as are books by Najarro and Bañales, as well as Francisco X. Alarcón’s Borderless Butterflies / Mariposas sin fronteras. Odilia Galván Rodríguez’s and Kadiri Vaquer Fernández’s books, along with the anthology Marie Boucher edited, Doves Born of Flames: Poetry of Resilience from Many Lands, can be ordered through Bookshop.
Satori Arts, where the 7 p.m. launch Oct. 27takes place, is at 815 Almar Avenue Unit 9 in Santa Cruz.
