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
My father, Eric Trethewey, is a poet, so I had one right inside the house. And on long trips, he'd tell me,… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
The more I've gotten interested in writing about history and making sense of myself within the continuum of history, the more I've… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
I am interested in 18th century natural philosophy, science, particularly botany, the study of hybridity in plants and animals, which, of course,… — 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
I think that it's hard enough being an adolescent and wanting so much to fit in with your peers, your schoolmates, and… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
Often people would mistake me for white when I was younger, and I didn't correct them; there would be a period of… — 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… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
In my own life, I believe it was an early education in poetical metaphor that helped me to grapple with and make… — 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
A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
Before I was ever a poet, my father was writing poems about me, so it was a turning of the tables when… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
It took me years of attempts and failed drafts before I finally wrote the elegies I needed to write. — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace - here on earth. — 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
