Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey (born April 26, 1966 in Gulfport , Mississippi ) is an American writer who received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for her poetry collection Native Guard . She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University . There she also leads the creative writing program.

Life

Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, to Eric Trethewey (1943-2014) and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough († 1985). Their parents' marriage was illegally concluded a year before the Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court of the United States has lifted the ban on so-called "multiracial" marriages in many southern states . The mother is referred to in Natasha Tretheweys birth certificate as colored ("colored") and the father as "Canadian".

Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, Trethewey's mother, was a social worker and inspired Trethewey to create Native Guard . Trethewey dedicated it to her mother. Her parents divorced when Trethewey was young, and Turnbough remarried. Her second husband murdered her shortly after she also divorced him. Trethewey was 19 years old at the time. Her mother's death shaped her and later she commented on this moment:

“That was the moment when I both felt that I would become a poet and then immediately afterward felt that I would not. I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened. "

“That was when I had two feelings that I was going to be a poet and then immediately after that I wouldn't. I turned to poetry to understand what had happened. "

- Natasha Trethewey

Trethewey's father was also a poet. He worked as a professor of English at Hollins University .

Natasha Trethewey at a book signing at the University of Michigan, 2011

education

Trethewey graduated with a BA in English from the University of Georgia , an MA in English and creative writing from Hollins University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst .

plant

Structurally, Trethewey combines her work in the form of free verse with more structured, traditional forms such as the sonnet and the villanelle . Thematically, her work examines the “memory and racial heritage of America”. “Bellocqs Ophelia”, published in 2002, is a collection of poems written as a letter novel in the form of a novella . It tells the fictional story of a multiracial prostitute portrayed by Ernest J. Bellocq in the early 20th century New Orleans .

The American Civil War is often the subject of her work. He has fascinated her in its meaning since childhood, especially since her birthday fell on Confederate Memorial Day , April 26, on the 100th anniversary after the end of the war in 1866. Her work Native Guard tells the story of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, a black regiment of the Union Army , which was mainly recruited from former slaves who guarded prisoners of war in the Confederate States Army .

2019 Trethewey was included in the anthology New Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby added.

United States Poet Laureate

On June 7, 2012, James Hadley Billington , the Librarian of Congress announced her as the 19th US Poet Laureate Prize winner. Billington said after hearing her poetry at the National Book Festival that he was instantly struck by the kind of classical quality with the richness and variety of structures with which she presented her poetry [...] she mixes her story with the historical Story in a way that the reader will be drawn deep into human tragedies. Newspapers noted that, unlike most award winners, Trethewey was at the peak of her career. On May 14, 2014, Tretheway gave her last lecture in her second term as US Poet Laureate.

Tretheway was the first United States Poet Laureate to reside in Washington, DC for the duration of her term. She wanted to be approachable for visitors.

bibliography

poetry

• Domestic work . Graywolf Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-55597-309-4 .
• Bellocq's Ophelia . Graywolf Press, 2002, ISBN 978-1-55597-359-9 .
• Native Guard . Houghton Mifflin , 2006, ISBN 978-0-618-87265-7 .
• Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast . University of Georgia Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8203-3381-6 . (Poetry, essays, and letters)
• Thrall . Houghton Mifflin, 2012, ISBN 978-0-547-57160-7 .

Editor

• Natasha Trethewey, Jeb Livengood (Ed.): Best New Poets 2007 . Samovar Press, Charlottesville, Virginia 2007, ISBN 978-0-9766296-2-7 .

Prizes and awards

• 2017 Heinz Award
• 2013 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 2012 United States Poet Laureate
• 2012 Poet Laureate of Mississippi
• 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
• 2004 Rockefeller Foundation for residence at the Bellagio Study Center
• 2003 Guggenheim scholarship
• 2001, 2003, 2007 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Awards
• 2001, 2007 Lillian Smith Book Award
• 2000 Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study , Harvard University
• 1999 First Annual Cave Canem Foundation Poetry Prize for Domestic Work , selected by Rita Dove
• 1999 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts
• 2019 member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eric Trethewey, 1943 - 2014 | Hollins Magazine |. In: hollins.edu. Retrieved January 8, 2017 . 
2. ^ Family portrait tragic, triumphant | The State Journal. In: state-journal.com. www.state-journal.com, accessed January 8, 2017 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Charles Mcgrath: Natasha Trethewey Is Named Poet Laureate . In: The New York Times . June 6, 2012, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com ).
4. ↑ Interview By Deborah Solomon: Poets - Questions for Natasha Trethewey - Deborah Solomon . In: The New York Times . May 13, 2007, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com ).
5. ↑ ^{a b} Creative Writing Master's Degree Program Faculty - Hollins University. In: archive.org. June 10, 2012, archived from the original on June 10, 2012 ; Retrieved January 5, 2017 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Charles Mcgrath: Natasha Trethewey Is Named Poet Laureate . In: The New York Times . June 6, 2012, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com ).
7. ↑ Husna Haq: Natasha Trethewey is named as the newest poet laureate . In: Christian Science Monitor . June 7, 2012, ISSN  0882-7729 ( csmonitor.com ).
8. ↑ Natasha Trethewey: Natasha Trethewey: Poetry 'showed me that I wasn't alone' . In: The Washington Post . January 1, 2013, ISSN  0190-8286 ( washingtonpost.com ).
9. ^ Memory's metaphors . In: The Boston Globe , May 7, 2007, p. A10. Retrieved April 7, 2011. 
10. ^ Malaika I. Robinson: Best American Poetry 2007 & Best New Poets 2007 . In: Olsson's: The News From Poems . Olsson's Books Records. January 17, 2008. Retrieved June 7, 2012.
11. ↑ Emory professor named US poet laureate | ajc.com. In: archive.org. August 14, 2012, archived from the original on August 14, 2012 ; Retrieved January 5, 2017 . 
12. ↑ Poet Laureate. (No longer available online.) In: ms.us. www.arts.state.ms.us, archived from the original on March 31, 2017 ; Retrieved January 5, 2017 . 
13. ↑ Poet Natasha Trethewey, Hymning the Native Guard. In: npr.org. NPR.org, accessed January 5, 2017 . 
14. ^ The Rockefeller Foundation 2004 Annual Report ( Memento April 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), accessed January 5, 2016
15. ↑ lillian smith. In: archive.org. October 9, 2012, archived from the original on October 9, 2012 ; Retrieved January 5, 2017 . 
16. ^ Cave Canem | Prize Winning Books. In: archive.org. April 22, 2016, archived from the original on April 22, 2016 ; Retrieved January 5, 2017 . 
17. ↑ Newly elected members 2019. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed May 30, 2019 . 

Web links

Commons : Natasha Trethewey  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Natasha Trethewey: Online Resources Library of Congress
• US Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway speaks at AUS