Branch 1: People are Poetry

Natasha Trethewey was placed as our countries Poet Laureate earlier this month.  She begins her position's responsibilities come September.
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The following poem reminds me of a similar experience.

Her Reading of Monument

Monument

Natasha Trethewey

Today the ants are busy
beside my front steps, weaving
in and out of the hill they’re building.
I watch them emerge and—

like everything I’ve forgotten—disappear
into the subterranean, a world
made by displacement. In the cemetery
last June, I circled, lost—

weeds and grass grown up all around—
the landscape blurred and waving.
At my mother’s grave, ants streamed in
and out like arteries, a tiny hill rising

above her untended plot. Bit by bit,
red dirt piled up, spread
like a rash on the grass; I watched a long time
the ants’ determined work,

how they brought up soil
of which she will be part,
and placed it before me. Believe me when I say
I’ve tried not to begrudge them

their industry, this reminder of what
I haven’t done. Even now,
the mound is a blister on my heart,
a red and humming swarm.

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Accomplishments:
-Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006 for Native Guard
-Poet Laureate of Mississippi
-Poetry Chair of Emory University
-Writer-in-Residence  at Hollins University.
-A.B. in English at University of Georgia
-M.A. in English/Creative Writing from Hollins University
-She will be the first poet laureate to take residency in Washington D.C.

Her Poetry
-adaptations of free verse and formal structure
-reoccurring themes:
     -racial legacies of America
     -synch of her story and stories in history