DIGITAL BURNOUT

The Cenote provides a place for poets to submit work free from the excessive editorial constraints of the digitally distracted Anthropocene. We hope to jettison the word “accessibility” entirely. The trend towards making poems “accessible” has, in fact, excluded many poems from publication simply for demanding more than the usual clickbait-happy, screentime-fatigued attention span. Such reactionary editorial strictures have disallowed more ambitious work, favoring instead the “twitterature” of an easy-to-scroll era. Of course, this does not mean that a poem must be entirely “inaccessible” or obscurantist: we simply wish to remove this restriction from any poems submitted here.

LITERARY UPSTARTS

Nor will you be censured here for responding to the tradition or (should we be daring enough to say?) for reinstating the term “literary” in some sense. You will not be rejected if you brazenly betray some curious peeping at the classics, at the canon, or let’s be honest, at the many canons on offer. Likewise, you will not be shunned for writing against various traditions, for rebelling against the canonical or for being “anti-literary,” whatever that might end up meaning.

LONG FORM/SHORT FORM

The Cenote will publish both short and long form poems in each issue. Sections from long poems/epics are welcome. We will also feature mixed media poems and experimental typographies.

MINIMAL INTERVENTION

We promise to publish poems with minimal editorial meddling. If a poet has revised a poem over the course of months, years, or decades, it seems in keeping with the usual, devilish rounds of revision that we publish poems honoring an author’s hours of tedium and distress. We will accept poems with unconventional typography/formatting, as we plan to release Issue # 1 as a both a chapbook and as a PDF (available on the website).

ADDENDUM: POLYGLOT ASPIRATIONS

Less a piece of editorial policy, and more of an aspiration, we hope to publish some poems written in a mixture of languages, appealing to a more international cadre of poets. Poems with smatterings of other languages are welcome here.

THE NAME

A cenote is a sinkhole formed when rainwater dissolves limestone, exposing a freshwater aquifer below. The word derives from Yucatec Maya ts’ono’ot (a sacred/natural well).