Sevé Torres is a poet, educator, and father. His work has been published in the Crab Orchard Review, Duende, Mead: A Magazine of Literature and Libations, and Dismantle: An Anthology of Writing from the VONA/Voices Workshop. He currently teaches at Rutgers University - Camden & Rowan University.



My fellow Rutgers-Camden graduate and educator, it is such a pleasure to interview you. I’ve been lucky to be your colleague, both teaching at Rutgers-Camden, over the past 5 years. I am beyond excited and thankful Connotation Press: An Online Artifact has finally gotten to publish your work.

Firstly, I love how these poems are trying to fill those empty spaces in our lives that I think we all have—like in “through the lens”, whereas there seems to be a question of how people view us and how we view ourselves, and the poem explores that space in-between. Thus, it feels like your poems address a hunger—something that strays and returns—something lost, something found, something residual. Rather than discuss what that thing is, the loss, why do you think we eventually replace that hunger? Furthermore, in what ways, do we substitute our needs for our wants? For example, in “Hunger’s Edge”, what is the glass of bourbon substituting?

Bourbon substitutes for grief. Most of my lived and written experiences are wrestling with some form of grief or loss. When I was three years old my paternal grandfather died of a brain hemorrhage, my maternal grandfather died of a heart attack, and my uncle Robert died from Lupus. I have no idea how I processed three deaths at that time, but I know that when I see bourbon leave its trace on a glass after it is swirled it reminds me of those that have gone before. When I look at the craft that goes into distilling bourbon I am struck by how much time and care has been taken with the process. Through the poet’s gaze, in bourbon I see hours of attention – all at once I see the buzz, I see the pain, I see the opportunity – this is what craft means in the true sense, that exploration of what is there, what we make of it, and how it is received. And I think we replace that hunger because we live with others – because at the end of the day we are not alone on this earth, we share space, and because we share space we must account for others. In that accounting, we substitute and shift and grow.


How does being an educator, in terms of practicality and functionality, affect your writing? Additionally, in “the stitching of a song”, your readers will experience and identify with those very real everyday gravities—bills, work, responsibilities, and grading papers. So, what challenges do you face when trying to “stitch” your songs or craft poetry while as Stevie Wonder put it, living for the city?

For me there can be a saturation point with language – trafficking in the words of my students, poetry collections, podcasts, audio books it’s sometimes hard to make space for my own words.

Being a poet has functionally become about facing the blank page, and then examining the words that I place on it, making sure that somehow I am able to tap into that space of worship – because for me it is only in the space of ritual, that I am able to engage most fully with what it means to be human. Being an educator and a being a poet is about facilitating a process of relentless questioning, inquiry, taking a position and dealing with the ethical responsibility that comes with that. It is also about knowing that writing is a process that takes effort and care. When I stitch my songs, my poetry, I draw from ancestors, from land, from movement and from the music that thrums just below the surface of all things.


If anyone studying poetry looked for an example of cadence, I am confident these poems exemplify how to create music in writing. Sevé , you have a natural ear to sound, either purposeful line breaks or subconscious off-rhyming. All your poems have these rhythmic undertones that bind each syllable to every word. In regards to cadence, how important is it for you to music-make in your writing? And where does that desire for sound come from?  

I care about the heart of my reader, about the ear of my reader, about the connection to the limbic system and the sensory details that draw a reader beyond the page into a lived poem. Without cadence and music I think it would be very hard to capture the wonder and the awe that allows me to unravel a poem from the space that exists beyond language. So the desire for sound comes from a deep and abiding love for music with or without an instrumental backdrop. I’m desperately fighting against my own intellectualism (generalizations, judgments, abstractions) in poems – so in a very real way, I make sure that my poems always tap into the physical body available to all of us through carefully crafted language – through music & and through image.


I admire your ability to story tell, especially in the poem “through his hands”. You take on this narrative of a blue-collar electrician, and almost become him—exploring his joys, his regrets. If any, what freedoms do you find in writing in the third person as opposed to first-person narratives?

Third person allows me to capture a sense of wonder and mystery. As someone who observes the world around me with rapt attention, who writes from the first person so frequently, I find it’s crucial to explore all points of view.

Specifically, in reference to “through his hands”, we very often remain on the surface of our experience and forget just how many people were required to make our lives possible – I feel like writing in third person forces us to truly look at the complexity that go into lives beyond our own. I think in our current era it can be hard to remember how vitally important this is – to look at others and ask ourselves how & why, to find the beauty in what we overlook.


Sometimes after reading an article, I like to look for references to point me to the writer’s sources or inspirations, but reading poetry typically is not as direct. Regardless, for our readers to know a little more about Sevé Torres, who are your literary influences? What writers are you reading? What writers haven’t you put down? What verses have you underlined—highlighted—memorized? And how do you think those authors have shaped your work?


With that in mind my literary influences can be found among: Raul Zuríta – INRI, which transcends poetry and speaks directly to the soul; Vievee Francis – Forest Primeval, poems that don’t flinch & dig all the way into your being; The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, which taps into a rich tradition of prophetic voice; all poems and teaching by June Jordan, wherein you can see my poetic lineage, my fight & my rage, my commitment to the line break; the oeuvre of Patrick Rosal especially Uprock, Headspin Scramble & Dive for the possibility it opened up inside of me and a belief in music to reveal ourselves to the world; Cynthia Dewi Oka especially her forthcoming collection Salvage, which comes for the wreck, and not the story of the wreck; Willie Perdomo – The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon for the syllable music & the heart that is not afraid to look at itself; Tyehimba Jess – Leadbelly for the excavation & the vision; Junot Díaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which weaves such layers of complexity & humanity that it’s existence helps expand the realm of what is possible in a given genre; Toni Morrison – who gives us all permission to write to our most sacred audience & to love the fullness of who we are as human beings- and I can go endlessly with influences...

I find myself returning to the final stanza in Vievee Francis’ poem “Altruism” from Forest Primeval:
I also find myself returning to Raul Zuríta when he writes in his poem “The Desert” from his collection INRI: “A country of the disappeared is shipwrecked in/ the desert. The prow of dead landscapes sinks/ wrecked like the night on the stones. The sun/ shines down on a black stain in the middle of/ the day. In the distance it seems like just a stain, / but it’s a ship in bright sunlight burying itself/ with its night in the stony fields of the desert. If/ they keep silent the stones will cry out.” The enjambment carries us along lead by this Chilean poet, survivor of the Pinochet regime, through the parts of humanity against which we ourselves break, we are reminded what it means to be called to an idea of poetry beyond awards & monetary compensation – that like the stones or the ship we eventually cry out & transform. This in the end is what I think we do as poets – we find each other in the hard work of our craft – and currently I have found No Dictionary of a Living Tongue by Duriel Harris, the Flayed City by Hari Alluri, and Tourist in Hell by Eleanor Wilner. These are keeping me good company at the moment.