“I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing...” — Natasha Trethewey Quote

I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place was shaping my experience of the world. I had to go to the Northeast for graduate school because I felt like I had to get far away from my South, be outside it, to understand it.

Writers, particularly poets, always feel exiled in some way - people who don't exactly feel at home, so they try to find a home in language.

Often as a poet I find that I am somewhat outside an experience I want to hold onto, consciously taking mental notes or writing them down in my journal - for fear that I will forget. It's not unlike being on a trip and taking pictures, your face behind a camera the whole time - the entire experience mediated by a lens.

On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

I'm well aware of the rules, and I don't want to play to the edge of them.

I'm certainly not squeamish at all. The countryside makes you very aware of birth and death.

I do think of myself very strongly as a New Zealander, but when I moved out to the States, I was aware that I didn't want to just live in a satellite community of only other New Zealanders.

I've been really aware of how important it is to me to just stay in the moment and enjoy it while it lasts. Because that's all you've got. If it ends, I'll move on to doing something else. If it lasts, great.