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… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
Often it seems that there are writers who are their best selves on the page. That Seamus Heaney was as genuine and deeply admirable in person as in his poems was to me a gift, then as now. — 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
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
“the little fires set the flames of an idea licking the page how knowledge burns” — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share
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
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
“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
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
My mother and my father divorced during the time that my father was getting his Ph.D. at Tulane. — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share
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
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
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
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
Jesmyn Ward left her Gulf Coast home for education and experience, but it called her back. It called on her in most painful ways,… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share
My name is Natasha Trethewey, and I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share
“I read the line over and over as if I might discern the little fires set the flames of an idea licking the page… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share
