WEBVTT 00:02.466 --> 00:05.000 align:left position:0%,start line:73.33% size:100% JUDY WOODRUFF: She is one of our most acclaimed poets, a two-time poet laureate and winner 00:05.000 --> 00:08.833 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% of the Pulitzer Prize for her collection "Native Guard." 00:08.833 --> 00:13.833 align:left position:12.5%,start line:73.33% size:87.5% Now Natasha Trethewey has written a memoir of her childhood, the murder of her mother, 00:15.266 --> 00:17.933 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% and her own calling as a poet. The book is published today. 00:17.933 --> 00:22.933 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% And Jeffrey Brown has this conversation for our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas. 00:24.933 --> 00:26.900 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY, Author, "Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir": "Three weeks gone, my 00:26.900 --> 00:31.366 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% mother came to me in a dream, her body whole again, but for one perfect wound." 00:34.366 --> 00:38.800 align:left position:12.5%,start line:73.33% size:87.5% JEFFREY BROWN: In the poem "Articulation," Natasha Trethewey writes of the violent death 00:38.800 --> 00:42.700 align:left position:12.5%,start line:80% size:87.5% of her mother, and how that forever shaped her own life and work. 00:42.700 --> 00:47.666 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: "How then could I not answer her life with mine, she who saved me with 00:51.000 --> 00:55.966 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% hers? And how could I not, bathed in the light of her wound, find my calling there? 01:01.700 --> 01:06.700 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: Natasha Trethewey was born to a black mother, Gwendolyn Turnbough, and 01:08.666 --> 01:12.633 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% white father, Eric Trethewey. It was 1966 in Mississippi. Mixed raced marriages had 01:14.066 --> 01:18.133 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% only recently been legalized, but Jim Crow customs continued. 01:18.133 --> 01:23.133 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% In 1972, her parents divorced. Her father, who became a poet and English professor, died 01:25.500 --> 01:29.633 align:left position:0%,start line:73.33% size:100% in 2014. The young Natasha spent her teenage years in Atlanta, where her mother met and 01:31.500 --> 01:35.433 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% married another man, Joel Grimmette, who would beat, abuse and, in 1985, murder her. 01:37.433 --> 01:42.433 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% Natasha was 19 at the time. Now, at 54, she's written "Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir." 01:45.100 --> 01:50.066 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: I am trying to pay homage to her, but also trying to remember her, trying 01:52.066 --> 01:55.600 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% to get back a little bit of what I buried and tried to forget so many years, because 01:57.066 --> 01:59.300 align:left position:0%,start line:93.33% size:100% parts of it were painful. 01:59.300 --> 02:03.433 align:left position:12.5%,start line:73.33% size:87.5% JEFFREY BROWN: You write about how, at a certain point, you realize that abuse was taking place, 02:05.466 --> 02:09.333 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% that she was being beaten. And you write about knowing it, not wanting to know it. 02:11.300 --> 02:15.500 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: I think that's the kind of way that trauma can divide you. You can 02:19.933 --> 02:24.933 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% be conscious of something, but try so hard to bury it, so as not to feel the pain of 02:28.200 --> 02:30.200 align:left position:37.5%,start line:93.33% size:62.5% it. 02:30.200 --> 02:34.200 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% I think that's what I was trying to do, trying to live with a smile on my face, as if that 02:35.833 --> 02:37.966 align:left position:0%,start line:93.33% size:100% weren't the story behind it. 02:37.966 --> 02:42.800 align:left position:12.5%,start line:73.33% size:87.5% JEFFREY BROWN: And then you describe yourself sort of shutting down for years on end, right, 02:44.833 --> 02:48.133 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% kind of losing years, turning away, trying to forget, but, of course, never really forgetting. 02:50.166 --> 02:54.733 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: I think that the body does not let you forget. Trauma waits to remind 02:56.400 --> 03:00.466 align:left position:12.5%,start line:80% size:87.5% you that it still exists inside in myriad ways. And it kept finding me. 03:02.466 --> 03:06.266 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: When she became a public figure, as poet laureate, Natasha saw articles written 03:07.766 --> 03:09.933 align:left position:12.5%,start line:80% size:87.5% about her make her mother's killing almost a kind of footnote. 03:09.933 --> 03:13.166 align:left position:12.5%,start line:73.33% size:87.5% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: And I thought, if that was going to continue to happen, that I needed 03:13.166 --> 03:18.166 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% to be the one to tell her story, so that she could be put in her proper context, as the 03:19.333 --> 03:21.433 align:left position:0%,start line:93.33% size:100% reason that I am a writer. 03:21.433 --> 03:26.133 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: Over the years, taking notes on legal pads and in notebooks, she pieced 03:26.133 --> 03:31.133 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% together memories, dreams, police and court documents and more, all incorporated into 03:33.100 --> 03:36.633 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% the book. At one point, she even writes in the second person, addressing her younger 03:36.633 --> 03:38.766 align:left position:37.5%,start line:93.33% size:62.5% self. 03:38.766 --> 03:42.633 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: The second person was an attempt to show that kind of split in my mind, 03:44.566 --> 03:47.933 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% trying to divide myself from the self that's experiencing that trauma. 03:47.933 --> 03:52.933 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% And so I wanted to enact that in the prose by speaking to the self. And that section 03:55.000 --> 03:59.233 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% ends: You know. Look at you. Even now, you're trying to distance yourself from that. 04:00.833 --> 04:05.766 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% "Ask yourself what's in your heart, that reliquary." 04:05.766 --> 04:09.766 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: As her memoir makes clear, there's no distance between the trauma and 04:09.766 --> 04:12.233 align:left position:0%,start line:93.33% size:100% the writer Natasha became. 04:12.233 --> 04:16.366 align:left position:0%,start line:73.33% size:100% Her most recent collection, "Monument<" contains some of her most direct poems about her mother. 04:18.333 --> 04:22.666 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% And we saw it up close, the empathy and focus on how stories impact lives, in the year-long 04:24.633 --> 04:28.700 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% "NewsHour" series "Where Poetry Lives," when our travels with Natasha, then poet laureate, 04:30.566 --> 04:33.133 align:left position:12.5%,start line:86.67% size:87.5% took us to a Brooklyn dementia program. 04:33.133 --> 04:35.566 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% TEENAGER: I started writing because I didn't have another way to cope. 04:35.566 --> 04:38.266 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: A Seattle writing workshop for troubled teens. 04:38.266 --> 04:40.200 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: What kinds of things have you written about? 04:40.200 --> 04:42.233 align:left position:12.5%,start line:86.67% size:87.5% JEFFREY BROWN: A Detroit elementary school. 04:42.233 --> 04:47.200 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: We all tell ourselves stories about our lives, whether we're writers or 04:49.200 --> 04:52.666 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% not. That's the way that we give meaning and purpose and shape to what seems chaotic, random. 04:56.400 --> 05:01.400 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% Being able to do that, to tell a story, to tell one's own story, I think, is empowering. 05:03.333 --> 05:07.533 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: You write of how, eventually, it's story, it's metaphor. Eventually, it's 05:09.533 --> 05:14.000 align:left position:12.5%,start line:73.33% size:87.5% poetry. Those are the things that helped you come to understand what had happened and how 05:14.733 --> 05:16.800 align:left position:12.5%,start line:93.33% size:87.5% you, in fact, survived. 05:16.800 --> 05:20.700 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: The facts sometimes are difficult and banal, but seeing them through 05:22.733 --> 05:26.533 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% the lens of metaphor helped me see that what seemed merely senseless is, if I think about 05:29.100 --> 05:34.100 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% my own calling to be a writer, it redeems what would otherwise be senseless, gives it 05:36.100 --> 05:38.100 align:left position:12.5%,start line:93.33% size:87.5% meaning and purpose. 05:38.100 --> 05:42.733 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: So you see a direct line from all of this in becoming the writer that you 05:43.566 --> 05:44.566 align:left position:37.5%,start line:93.33% size:62.5% became? 05:44.566 --> 05:46.566 align:left position:0%,start line:93.33% size:100% NATASHA TRETHEWEY: Absolutely. 05:46.566 --> 05:50.566 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% I don't think I'd be a writer without that existential wound. As Lorca pointed out, that 05:52.966 --> 05:57.966 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% in trying to heal the wound that never heals lies the strangeness in an artist's work, 05:59.933 --> 06:03.533 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% that kind of awareness of death that can make something, not just beautiful, but something 06:06.600 --> 06:10.300 align:left position:12.5%,start line:86.67% size:87.5% also meaningful in a different way. 06:10.300 --> 06:15.300 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% I think, at 19, I was telling myself that I had experienced that wound, and that I would 06:18.033 --> 06:23.033 align:left position:0%,start line:80% size:100% have to make something of it. And, as Rumi said, the wound is the place where the light 06:23.766 --> 06:25.766 align:left position:12.5%,start line:93.33% size:87.5% enters you. And it did. 06:25.766 --> 06:29.666 align:left position:0%,start line:86.67% size:100% JEFFREY BROWN: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jeffrey Brown.