Natasha Trethewey

I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place…

— Natasha Trethewey

My own journey in becoming a poet began with memory - with the need to record and hold on to what was…

— Natasha Trethewey

“the little fires set the flames of an idea licking the page how knowledge burns”

— Natasha Trethewey

I think there is a poem out there for everyone, to be an entrance into the poetry and a relationship with it.

— Natasha Trethewey

When I write notes in my journal, I'm just trying to scribble down as much as possible. Later on, I decide whether…

— Natasha Trethewey

“Here is the threshold I do not cross: a sliver of light through the doorway finds his tattoo, the anchor on his…

— Natasha Trethewey

I started out in graduate school to be a fiction writer. I thought I wanted to write short stories. I started writing…

— Natasha Trethewey

My mother and my father divorced during the time that my father was getting his Ph.D. at Tulane.

— Natasha Trethewey

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

I've been telling my students, 'Imitate, imitate.' And they say, 'Well, what if I plagiarize, or what if I'm not original? I…

— Natasha Trethewey

I know that my tendency is to be linear, and I'm trying to find ways to subvert that. And so in 'Bellocq's…

— Natasha Trethewey

I think people turn to poetry more often than they think they do, or encounter it in more ways than they think…

— Natasha Trethewey

Jesmyn Ward left her Gulf Coast home for education and experience, but it called her back. It called on her in most…

— Natasha Trethewey

My name is Natasha Trethewey, and I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi…

— Natasha Trethewey

“I read the line over and over as if I might discern the little fires set the flames of an idea licking…

— Natasha Trethewey

First, I emptied the closets of your clothes, threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised from your touch, left empty the jars…

— Natasha Trethewey

“I think poets are people who are like this; for whatever reason you feel psychological exile because you’re always an outsider...”

— Natasha Trethewey

“He is dark as history, origin of the word native: the weight of blood”

— Natasha Trethewey

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

When I was born here in Gulfport in 1966, my parents' interracial marriage was still illegal. And it was very hard to…

— Natasha Trethewey

I am interested in 18th century natural philosophy, science, particularly botany, the study of hybridity in plants and animals, which, of course,…

— Natasha Trethewey

Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find…

— Natasha Trethewey

The act of making poetry is an act of hope.

— Natasha Trethewey

One of two historically African American communities that sprang up along the Mississippi Gulf Coast after emancipation, North Gulfport has always been…

— Natasha Trethewey

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