Natasha Trethewey reappointed as U.S. poet laureate
The nation's top poet is staying put. According to the AP, Natasha Trethewey has been reappointed poet laureate, entering her second year, the Library of Congress will announce Monday.
Trethewey is coming off a busy year as the first Southern laureate since Robert Penn Warren. She released a new collection, Thrall, last August, while continuing as a professor at Emory University. (That's on top of her 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Native Guard.) In her second term, which officially begins in September, Trethewey will reportedly collaborate with PBS on reports "about poetry and society."
Trethewey's work has long grappled with the complexities of her own background — born in Mississippi, raised in Atlanta, a degree from the University of Georgia — and the many competing questions it raises about race, place, and history.
"I think that there are ways that you can maintain a strong awareness of Southern history and Southern culture without being mired in what is bad about the past and what we need to leave behind about it," she told Creative Loafing last year. "I also hate its violent history and some of its ongoing blindness and racism. And yet, to love a place like this is to want to make a place better."
Trethewey is serving a simultaneous, four-year larueate-ship as the state poet of Mississippi.
Read more:
Comments have been disabled on this post