My father is a poet, my stepmother is a poet, and so I always had encouragement as a child to write. — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
When I was born here in Gulfport in 1966, my parents' interracial marriage was still illegal. And it was very hard to… — 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 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
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 first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself… — Natasha Trethewey Copy Share Image
My mother was murdered by my step-father, my brother's father, who was also named Joel, twenty-five years ago. Whatever sadness or burden… — 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
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
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
