I think often people don’t realize the great diversity of Southern writing because in their minds, if you’re not from the South, it can seem regional and small, and of course that’s not the case at all when you start to read the work. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
I’ve been most happy to be an advocate for the kinds of grassroots things that people are doing who care about poetry. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
Memory.’ ‘Race.’ ‘Murder.’ That’s what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I’m grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
I think the biggest thing that I have to do is to remind people that poetry is there for us to turn to not only to remind us that we’re not alone – for example, if we are grieving the loss of someone – but also to help us celebrate our joys. That’s why so many people I know who’ve gotten married will have a poem read at the wedding. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
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. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
My father is a poet, my stepmother is a poet, and so I always had encouragement as a child to write. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
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. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
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. Natasha Trethewey Read Quote
