In 2019, poetry went international in Panama City — and I was part of making it happen.

There’s something that happens when you put people in a room and tell them: you have something worth saying.

Through the Círculo de Poesía de Panamá, I co-organized “Palabra en el Mundo” — the International Poetry Festival in Panamá, alongside Salvadoran writer and poet Williams Méndez. A global initiative that uses poetry as a vehicle for peace, cultural exchange, and artistic expression.

Bringing an international festival to Panama City meant coordinating across borders, managing logistics, curating voices from different countries, and creating a space where language became a bridge — not a barrier. It was one of those projects that reminded me why I do this work. Not just the communication strategy behind it, but the human infrastructure it takes to make something like that real.

For two consecutive days, the kind of people you wouldn’t normally find in the same room showed up — and stayed. Business owners. Artists. Professionals. Students. Grandparents. People who hadn’t written since school. People who wrote in secret and had never read their work out loud. All of them, together — in workshops designed not to teach poetry, but to excavate it.

Watching multiple generations sit in the same circle, share the same silence before reading, and then erupt into the kind of applause that says I see you — that doesn’t leave you. That’s the kind of community I believe in building. Not the kind that looks good in a photo. The kind that changes how you see yourself after you leave.

A deep thank you to our sponsors and donors, and a special shoutout to Panama Coworking Center for believing in this before it existed.