The Believer Interviews Natasha Trethewey

Vogue Robinson writes about former United States poet laureate Natasha Trethewey's life and work before their conversation at Las Vegas bookstore The Writer's Block at The Believer. In the introduction to their discussion, Robinson begins, explaining that the "first thing I noticed when entering the store was the empty shelves; the store was technically closed, as the owners were in the process of relocating to a new shop nearby. I reached the checkout desk, and there, in a modest corner guarded by Baron, the store’s in-house bunny rabbit, was a table laden with the following titles by Natasha Trethewey: Thrall, Native Guard, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Domestic Work, and her most recent publication, Monument: Poems New and Selected. My first collection of poetry, Vogue 3:16, sat right beside Natasha’s books, mimicking the way we’d sit later that evening." From there: 

When Natasha entered the Writer’s Block, I was giddy with excitement. Not only has this woman served two terms as the United States poet laureate, but she was poet laureate of Mississippi at the same time. We had only a moment to speak before the reading. I confessed that I had done a ton of research on her life, and had listened to every podcast episode and watched almost every YouTube video she’d been featured in. She smiled and replied, “I did some research on you too.”

It was an honor to have my collection sold alongside Natasha’s, and we were both excited to tell friends that our books were the only books sold in a bookstore. We were there to discuss Monument, which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Poetry. Monument begins with a quote from “The Great City” by Walt Whitman: “Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds…” Monument is a compilation of Natasha’s previous books. It celebrates the lives of Southern working-class black people, and of one of the first black military regiments, the 1st Louisiana Native Guard. Natasha’s poetry is keen and descriptive, and she often uses photographs or paintings as inspiration. She observes and sometimes reimagines the lives of the people seen and unseen in each image. Indeed, Monument stands statuesque on the foundation of her past writing and is chiseled with the purpose of telling the story of her family, her Mississippi, and her late mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough.

In the days leading up to the interview, I listened multiple times to Natasha’s lecture “Why I Write: Poetry, History, and Social Justice.” I played it in the mornings, I savored it during lunches, and I fell asleep to Natasha saying, “Thus, I write to claim my native land even as it has forsaken me, rendered me an outsider. I write so as not to be a foreigner in my homeland. I write from a place of psychological exile. I take up the burden of history.” The words left me in tears, and I felt a new charge to fully claim my own history and to root myself in purpose, as she has done.

Read the rest of Vogue Robinson's introduction and the discussion that ensues at The Believer.