Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Tretheweyis an American poet who was appointed United States Poet Laureate in June 2012; she began her official duties in September. She won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection Native Guard, and she is the Poet Laureate of Mississippi...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth26 April 1966
CountryUnited States of America
aware experience far felt graduate nature northeast outside school shaping understand
I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place was shaping my experience of the world. I had to go to the Northeast for graduate school because I felt like I had to get far away from my South, be outside it, to understand it.
century consider interested natural plants science study
I am interested in 18th century natural philosophy, science, particularly botany, the study of hybridity in plants and animals, which, of course, then allows me to consider the hybridity of language.
celebrated exactly memorial
My name is Natasha Trethewey, and I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the first Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1866.
best poetry
I want to be the best advocate and promoter for poetry that I can be.
cultural historical time
For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.
faith poetry
I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.
exactly home people
Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find a home in language.
academic dramas english love played seeing
I love mystery novels... I love seeing the dramas played out in academic departments, particularly English departments. I started reading these when I was going up for tenure.
bits encounter people pieces places poetry remembered songs turn ways
I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think that they do. I think we forget the places that we encounter it, say, in songs or in other little bits and pieces of things that we may have remembered from childhood.
adolescent erase fit hard marked school sign wanting
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and to erase any sign of difference, to be part of the group. And being biracial but also being black in a predominately white school marked me as different.
allow anyone deeply telling
I've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I want to be myself.' And I always tell them, 'Your self will shine through'... If you allow yourself to feel deeply and honestly, what you say won't be like anyone else.
names what-is-love
What is love?/ One name for it is knowledge.
memories loss aunt
My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost. One of my earliest poems, Give and Take, was about my Aunt Sugar, how I was losing her to her memory loss.
memories blood people
My obsessions stay the same - historical memory and historical erasure. I am particularly interested in the Americas and how a history that is rooted in colonialism, the language and iconography of empire, disenfranchisement, the enslavement of peoples, and the way that people were sectioned off because of blood.