Natasha Trethewey

Biography

Natasha Trethewey, a VQR contributing editor, served two terms as the nineteenth poet laureate of the United States (2012 – 2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry: Monument (HMH, 2018), which was longlisted for the National Book Award; Thrall (HMH, 2012); Native Guard (Mariner, 2007), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002); and Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. Trethewey is also the author of the memoir Memorial Drive (Ecco, 2020). She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.

See Work

ESSAYS / Winter 2014

Necessary Utterance

By Natasha Trethewey

Poetry cannot fail, yet the role of poetry waxes and wanes in the lives of many people. We turn to it when we need it.
POETRY / Spring 2012

Enlightenment

By Natasha Trethewey

In the portrait of Jefferson that hangs
at Monticello, he is rendered two-toned:
his forehead white with illumination—

CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Kin

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

He has the surname that suggests
a contested kinship: Jefferson—
CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Prodigal II

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

I wanted to say I have come home
to bear witness, to read the sign
emblazoned on the church marquee—
CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Watcher

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

At first, there was nothing to do but watch.
For days, before the trucks arrived, before the work
of clean-up, my brother sat on the stoop and watched.
POETRY / Fall 2009

Benediction

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

I thought that when I saw my brother
walking through the gates of the prison,
he would look like a man entering his life. 
CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Believer

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

The house is in need of repair, but is—
for now, she says—still hers. After the storm,
she laid hands on what she could reclaim:
CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Witness

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

Here is North Gulfport—
its liquor stores and car washes,
CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Congregation

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

Somewhere in the post-Katrina wreckage and disarray of my grandmother’s house, there is a photograph of my brother Joe and me, our arms around each other’s shoulders. We are at a long-gone nightclub in Gulfport, the Terrace Lounge, standing...
CRITICISM / Fall 2009

Exegesis

By Natasha Trethewey ,  Photography by Joshua Cogan

On Saturday, when I come to see
my brother, they call him, over loudspeaker,
to the tower—a small guardroom