The Library of Congress’s poetry blog, From the Catbird Seat,” has run a few posts on Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s second-term project, “Where Poetry Lives.” For her project, Trethewey has joined NewsHour Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for a series of on-location reports in various cities across the United States to explore several large societal issues, through a focused lens offered by poetry and her own coming-to-the-art.
According to Robert Casper, head of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center, “‘Where Poetry Lives,’ has offered her the opportunity to see first-hand how poetry strengthens our communities. She has travelled from coast-to-coast and met people from different backgrounds and at different parts of their lives, all of whom connected to her and to each other through the art.”
Since September of last year, Trethewey has traveled to Brooklyn to spend time with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, to Detroit to visit Motor City middle-schoolers and to Boston for a reading and writing workshop for medical students, among others.
Now all of the content from the series—the segments themselves as well as additional content the NewsHour staff have created—lives on one website. Visit “Where Poetry Lives” to watch all related content.
And, make sure to check out Casper’s blog posts on the series and some of his experiences traveling with the Poet Laureate to produce some of the segments: On the First NewHour Segment with the Poet Laureate, Tune In Tonight! and Finding “Where Poetry Lives.”