Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters 2025 - Natasha Trethewey: Why I Write

Speaker
Natasha Trethewey, United States Poet Laureate (2012-2014) and Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet
Event date
Event time
17:00
Venue
Rothermere American Institute
1a South Parks Road
Oxford
OX1 3UB
Venue details

Seminar Room

Event type
Lectures and seminars
Event cost
Free
Disabled access?
Yes
Booking required
Required

Natasha Trethewey, United States Poet Laureate (2012-2014) and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, will deliver the 2025 Esmond Harmsworth Lecture in American Arts and Letters, entitled Why I Write, focusing on her 2024 memoir The House of Being (which is an exquisite meditation on the geographies we inherit and the metaphors we inhabit) and why she writes, as well as discussing her poetry and other works.

In a shotgun house in Gulfport, Mississippi, at the crossroads of Highway 49, the legendary highway of the Blues, and Jefferson Street, Natasha Trethewey learned to read and write. Before the land was a crossroads, however, it was a pasture: a farming settlement where, after the Civil War, a group of formerly enslaved women, men and children made a new home.

In The House of Being, Trethewey revisits the geography of her childhood to trace the origins of her writing life, born of the need to create new metaphors to inhabit 'so that my story would not be determined for me'. She recalls the markers of history and culture that dotted the horizons of her youth: the Confederate flags proudly flown throughout Mississippi; her gradual understanding of her own identity as the child of a Black mother and a white father; and her grandmother’s collages lining the hallway, offering glimpses of the world as it could be. With the clarity of a prophet and the grace of a poet, Trethewey offers up a vision of writing as reclamation: of our own lives and the stories of the vanished, forgotten and erased.

The event will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception.

Places are limited and registration for this event is essential. Register here.