Cento aims to provide Houstonians across generations and cultures with opportunities to express themselves creatively through the power of poetry. Our main focus is to create spaces for stories to unfold. We practice a form of asset-based community development in which we leverage the existing strengths, skills, and resources of a community for maximum impact. In practice, our projects take on many forms—from conducting classroom visits during National Poetry Month to distributing packaged materials and step-by-step guides. Each act of community creative expression reflects the core pillars of our work: flexibility and collaboration. Cento pushes the boundaries of the imagination while encouraging others to translate their abstract realities into the thoughtful expression on the written page.

Cento was founded in 2024 by Kaviya Dhir, a student poet at St. John’s School. True to her namesake, Kaviya originates from the Sanskrit word for poetry. A 2025 commended Foyle Young Poet, Kaviya first discovered her love for poetry in the local classrooms of Writers in the Schools and J Mark Price’s Writing Workshop. Her work reflects her family’s rich background experiences—spanning the regions of South America to South Asia—as well as her passion for community service and the commonality of human emotion. She is a poetry alumna of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and the Juniper Institute for Young Writers. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Journal, the Oxonian Review, Wildness, and elsewhere.