POET

Natasha Trethewey (1966 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Natasha Trethewey comes from a family of poets. Her father, Eric, is the author of three collections of poems, and her stepmother is also a poet. Trethewey grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and Atlanta, Georgia, enjoying the company of intellectuals--her father being a college professor--and spent a lot of time in her youth lost in books at the library while her father studied. She credits her father for not only encouraging her own writing but for teaching her that what is most important in life demands hard work and taking risks.

When Trethewey first went to college, she thought she would major in English and fiction writing. It was not until she began her graduate studies that she decided to focus on poetry. In an interview, posted on the Auburn University Web site, Trethewey describes the process of her writing: "I'm always looking at some image and thinking how it might become a poem. . . . I often have to stop and write something down." At this same Web site, Trethewey also adds a suggestion for aspiring poets: "If you love the sound of words and are always fascinated with images and trying to make pictures with words, then you probably have what it takes to be a poet." That curiosity and passion has to be coupled with a lot of reading and a lot of hard work, she adds. She also emphasizes the need to practice writing every day. Quoting fellow poet Mary Oliver, she says, "If you don't keep the appointments [with the muse], the muse is not going to come. She's going to think you are not reliable."

Trethewey's first collection of poetry, Domestic Work, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, an annual award for the best first collection of poems submitted by an African-American poet. In this book are various forms of poetry, including sonnets, traditional ballads, and free verse poems. The theme is the often-mundane work of ordinary people; the poems focus mostly on black women's and men's work. Trethewey exposes the psychological worlds of working-class people, especially those who live under the harsh realities of a Jim Crow South. The poetic characters Trethewey has created are not depicted as victims, however, but rather as proactive individuals who, despite the suffering they have endured, know that living demands taking risks and that their precious days off belong to them.

The praise Trethewey received for her first collection often revolves around the musicality and imagery of her poems. For instance, F. D. Reeve, writing for the journal Poetry, described Trethewey's most powerful poems as "snapshot[s] from the long drawer of family memories . . . some news from a distant place." Rita Dove, former U.S poet laureate, wrote the introduction for Domestic Work. Dove responded to the musicality of Trethewey's writing by describing her poetry as being "shot through with the syncopated attitude of the blues." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote, "Trethewey's fine first collection functions as near-social documentary."

Trethewey's second collection, Bellocq's Ophelia, is the result of research that she began while still in graduate school. She got her idea for this collection of poems from seeing E. J. Bellocq's Storyville Portraits, which contained photographs of prostitutes, many of whom were women of mixed races who lived in the infamous red-light district of New Orleans during the early 1900s. Trethewey imagines the life of one such prostitute, whom she has named Ophelia.

At the Web site for the National Endowment for the Arts, Trethewey described her work on this project. "In doing historical research into the period (roughly 1910-1917), I intend to create a voice that can tell secrets and uncover parts of experience that have perhaps been overlooked." Trethewey further stated that this work blends "the details of my own mixed-race experience in the deep South with the details" of her created character Ophelia.

Trethewey's poems have also appeared in such distinguished literary publications as Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, New England Review, and Southern Review. She has received numerous awards and is a member of the Dark Room Collective, a group of African-American poets founded by Thomas Sayers Ellis and Susan Strange that tries to act as a bridge between established black literary talent and emerging young writers.