Acclaimed poet Natasha Tretheway, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her 2006 collection, Native Guard, gives a reading and talk at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, in UNC Asheville’s Humanities Lecture Hall.
According to a press release, “Native Guard, Trethewey’s third published collection, also contains poems examining feelings in Mississippi about Tretheway’s biracial heritage. Her parents travelled to Ohio to marry because they could not legally do so in their home state. …In her UNC Asheville appearance, Trethewey will likely present poems from her newest collection, to be released this fall, which is concerned with colonialism in the Americas. ‘My obsessions stay the same – historical memory and historical erasure,’ said Trethewey. ‘Thrall, which is the name of the new book, arises out of the research on Native Guard.’ I always go to the Oxford English Dictionary … the first definition [of native] is ‘someone born into the condition of servitude, of thrall.’
“Trethewey is Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. Her appearance is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities Professorship at UNC Asheville.”
The Feb. 23 reading is free and open to the public. Info at 251-6808.
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