Natasha Trethewey Quotes

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

I'm so happy to be an advocate for poetry.

I want to be the best advocate and promoter for poetry that I can be.

Granted, I'm someone who loves words. I've always loved poetry - so it's suited to me.

There are distinct duties of a poet laureate. I plan a reading series at the Library of Congress and advise the librarian. The rest is how I want to promote poetry.

The next big push in my life is trying to get poetry popular again.

I have my Poetry 180 project, which I've made my main project. We encourage high schools, because that's really where, for most people, poetry dies off and gets buried under other adolescent pursuits.

I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.

Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.

If you think about making a difference in the community, my family has always had a strong interest in the arts. I'm always interested in finding ways to innovate... It's a blend; it's not a point focus.

When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don't read much anymore.

My mum always liked poetry, and she had pictures on the wall, so there was this visual stuff around.

I'm inspired by playwrights, novelists, poets: The value of language has been a lifelong passion of mine. I enjoy it. I'm good at it.

In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

Like most lit nerds, I'm a voracious reader. I never got enough poetry under my belt growing up but I do read it - some of my favorites, Gina Franco and Angela Shaw and Cornelius Eady and Kevin Young, remind me daily that unless the words sing and dance, what's the use of putting them down on paper.

I'd like to go back to poetry again. I really, really revere good poetry. It's been my private discipline.

When I was asked to be Writer in Residence at Edinburgh I thought, you can't teach poetry. This is ridiculous.

Because people are very interested in my poetry, in what I say.

Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is qualified to take part in a walking race. But just as all of us can and do walk, so all of us can and do use language poetically.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

I'm the happiest combination you can think of. I'm a Russian poet, an English essayist, and a citizen of the United States.

Careers don't interest me. The only thing that interests me is continuing to be a poet on one level or another, whether acting or writing or directing.

I shall, in due time, be a Poet.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.

All musicians should write poetry or at least read it if they want to improve their game. Except for people who believe lyrics don't matter.