Centa Therese
Poet, Photoartist, Interdisciplinary Educator
the myth of me
(2025)
Centa's newly published poetry collection, the myth of me (2025), by Kelsay Books invites readers into raw dreamscapes and intimate inner reckonings—poems described as “subterranean mirrors” by poet Annie Finch. Through her words, Therese creates spaces where silence becomes language, wounds become wisdom, and the myth of isolation is unraveled by a deeper belonging.
Praise for the myth of me
Centa Therese’s disarmingly vulnerable dreamscapes invite us to enter, naked, into a series of rich and often uncomfortable confrontations with our deeper consciousness. An heir of Woolf, Therese casts a patient, deep, unflinching net into the endless flow of moments streaming under the dryness of so many of our daily lives. To enter Therese’s world is to dip into an awareness as fresh and exacting as a hall of subterranean mirrors.
— Annie Finch, author, Spells: New and Selected Poems
In this remarkable collection of lyric and prose-poems, the myth of me, Centa Therese reveals the life of “something wingless” that knows “only by dream what it is to fly.” Here are poems of deep mystery; poems of such incantation, they light up all the senses with images bathed in the duende of the unconscious. Read these poems with wonder and pleasure, and like da Vinci, we’ll walk the earth with eyes turned skyward, “singing each other home.”
— Terry Ehret, author, Lucky Break and Night Sky Journey
As a reader, of Centa Therese’s collection, I find myself connected both to my inner world and the external earth and sky, as I journey with the author on her own inward yet embodied pilgrimage toward both light and language. Indeed, the title the myth of me is apt because it is precisely this type of inward/outward spiritual yet ecological journey that a body, contemplating poetry, does want.
— Anna Marie Johnson, Ph.D., Professor of Language/Literature, Eastern Mennonite University
About Centa Therese
Centa Therese is a poet, photoartist, and interdisciplinary educator whose work weaves together language, body, and image to illuminate the mysteries of the human experience. Her newly published poetry collection, the myth of me (2025), by Kelsay Books invites readers into raw dreamscapes and intimate inner reckonings—poems described as “subterranean mirrors” by poet Annie Finch. Through her words, Therese creates spaces where silence becomes language, wounds become wisdom, and the myth of isolation is unraveled by a deeper belonging. Her collection of prose poems Night Gardening is looking for a publisher. Its title poem is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Spring of 2026. Therese has authored three collections of poems, a memoir, and has edited a collection by women in recovery. Most recently, she has been learning meter and form from Annie Finch, Ph.d., alchemizing iPhone photos and tending to her three cats.
Her work can also be found at centatherese.com and centatheresestudios.com.