Just One Thing with Séamus Isaac Fey

Séamus Isaac Fey’s poem “Tove's Cento: Youth” muses on the intensity of emotion, the distance between a parent and a child, desire for an undefined future. Here they share just one thing about the piece:

“‘Tove's Cento: Youth,’ is the second of my three poem series of Tove's Cento's, conspiring and collaborating with Tove Ditlevsen's The Copenhagen Trilogy. There's a cento for each part of the trilogy, ‘Childhood,’ ‘Youth,’ and ‘Dependency’. ‘Tove's Cento: Childhood’ was published in American Poetry Review, and ‘Tove's Cento: Dependency’ is currently unpublished but has been submitted in a few packets I've sent out. They are all going to be in my second poetry collection. The process of writing each cento is arduous and gratifying; I read each part of the trilogy, highlighted what moved me, and then typed it all up into one big document wherein I would cut and paste the poem together with the pieces I had. Each one took about 72 hours at the computer, after finishing the reading aspect. I think there's a lot of shaking hands going on between Ditlevsen's and my work, and the centos have been a way to explore that. In the Copenhagen Trilogy, Youth struck me in its relationship to cost—what youth costs us and in what ways we pay.”

Side profile of a man with short brown hair holding a microphone against a white brick wall. He has a gold earring and a brown wool jacket. A fluorescent light lights the wall and the photograph.
SLMblog, just one thing