I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I started out in graduate school to be a fiction writer. I thought I wanted to write short stories. I started writing… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
It is a tremendous honor to be named poet laureate, but one that I find humbling as well, because it's the kind… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
Writing 'Native Guard,' I didn't know I was working on a single book. I began writing that book because I was interested… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I think often people don't realize the great diversity of Southern writing because in their minds, if you're not from the South,… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
When I was growing up there, North Gulfport was referred to as 'Little Vietnam' because of the perception of crime and depravity… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
In the early 1970s in Atlanta, I attended what had formerly been an all-white school but had become a black school after… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
My parents had to go to Ohio to get married in 1965 because it was still illegal in Mississippi. My white father… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
When kids look at broccoli, they call it 'little trees,' because they see it not just for the word 'broccoli.' They see… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I think I felt at some point that I couldn't understand poetry or that it was beyond me or it didn't speak… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
Because I'm a younger laureate, it seemed important to me to do something - not to just accept the honor of the… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
My obsessions stay the same - historical memory and historical erasure. I am particularly interested in the Americas and how a history… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
As much as we love each other, there is some growing difficulty in my adult relationship with my father. Because we're both… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place was shaping… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was being lost.… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
“the little fires set the flames of an idea licking the page how knowledge burns” — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it. — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether to follow… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
“Here is the threshold I do not cross: a sliver of light through the doorway finds his tattoo, the anchor on his forearm tangled… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I started out in graduate school to be a fiction writer. I thought I wanted to write short stories. I started writing poems at… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
My mother and my father divorced during the time that my father was getting his Ph.D. at Tulane. — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
My father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet, so I had one right inside the house. And on long trips, he'd tell me, if I… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
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… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I know that my tendency is to be linear, and I'm trying to find ways to subvert that. And so in 'Bellocq's Ophelia' my… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think that they… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
