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Words of wisdom
Miss., U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey makes big impression by monica atkins
F
ans, students and professors packed the Jackson State University College of Liberal Arts lecture hall Sept. 20 for a visit from Pulitzer Prize-winner and state and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. Trethewey is the author of four poetry collections: Domestic Work (2000); Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; Native Guard (2006) and Thrall (2012). She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). Through her poetry, Trethewey discusses the history and growing pains of being raised as a biracial child in the Deep South. Trethewey told the audience that her inspiration as a child came from her mother’s bookshelf, which consisted of The Diary of Anne Frank, James Baldwin novels, mythology stories and a 1966 encyclopedia. “At its most essential level my work has always concerned the intersections of public and personal history and the contingents and historical memory of our shared past,” the Gulfport, Miss., native said. English major Ashanti Alexander, 21, attended the reading with her Shakespearean class. “I’ve read a lot of her works, and it’s such an honor to have the opportunity to experience her up close and personal.”
History major Ylani Hayes, 21, of Natchez, who also was in the standing-room-only audience, called Trethewey’s poetry “unconventional” and “progressive.” Her work is so vivid, Hayes explained, “you can practically see what she says through her word.” There is a reason for that. “I always think of poems first as a photograph,” said Tretheway, who is the James Weldon Johnson Fellow in African American Studies at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. “The frozen moment of a photograph can give way to the narrative of a film; that’s how I think of poems when I write them.” The event at Jackson State was sponsored by the Library of Congress, the Margaret Walker Center, the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi Library Commission, the Mississippi Center for the Book and the National Center for the Book. “Natasha is an inspiration to us all, and I encourage everyone to take time to learn why the honor of U.S. Poet Laureate, as well as Mississippi Poet Laureate, was bestowed upon her,” said Malcolm White, director of the Mississippi Arts Commission. Trethewey is the first person to serve simultaneously as a state and U.S. Poet Laureate. She also serves as the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University.
I always think of poems first as a photograph. The frozen moment of a photograph can give way to the narrative of a film; that’s how I think of poems when I write them. Natasha Trethewey
Mississippi and U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey reads from her works at the JSU College of Liberal Arts.
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