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
cultural historical time
For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.
archives collection congress fond jefferson library personal poems research room spending summer time
On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.
correct people period time
Often people would mistake me for white when I was younger, and I didn't correct them; there would be a period of time that they just thought I was.
divorced time
My mother and my father divorced during the time that my father was getting his Ph.D. at Tulane.
behind camera entire experience face fear hold journal mental notes outside poet somewhat taking time trip unlike
Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
faith poetry
I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.
best poetry
I want to be the best advocate and promoter for poetry that I can be.
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.
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.