Natasha Trethewey Interviews Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown, University of San Diego
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Presentation Sections:
Interview with Natasha Trethewey:
In this interview, conducted on September 5,
2009, during the Decatur (Georgia) Book Festival, Jericho Brown
talks with Natasha Trethewey about learning to love his hometown,
gay black identity, the visibility of southern poets, and autobiography
in poetry.
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Part 1 (8:06 min.)
Topics: • Difficulties of claiming Shreveport, Louisiana, as home. • What Brown learned from Langston Hughes' "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." • The influence of Louisiana poets. Brown's insistence on being a southern writer. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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Part 2 (9:19 min.)
Topics: • The place of region in writing. • Talk of Nikky Finney's anthology The Ringing Ear leads to a discussion of who reads black writers. • Alice Walker's awareness of North and South in her early books. • Visibility of black southern poets such as Honoree Jeffers and Terrance Hayes. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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Part 3 (1:39 min.)
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Part 4 (6:00 min.)
Topics: • Working and hanging out in New Orleans. The city's effects on his poetry. • The richness of poetry and music in New Orleans. The Maple Leaf scene. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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Part 5 (11:14 min.)
Topics: • Negotiating gay, black, southern identity. • Jericho Brown and Nelson Demery III. • The space created by Brown's renaming himself. • The responsibility of writing for readers yet unborn. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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Part 6 (4:43 min.)
Topics: • Ethics of writing about living people and life experiences. • Poetry as enduring art. RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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About Jericho Brown:
Jericho Brown's first book, Please, was published by New Issues
in Poetry and Prose in 2008. His poems have appeared in
many magazines, including The Iowa Review, Oxford American,
and New England Review, and his honors include fellowships from
the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University and the Krakow Poetry Seminar
in Poland. Brown is an Assistant Professor of English at the University
of San Diego.
"Natasha Trethewey Interviews Jericho
Brown"
is part of the Poets
in Place series, a Research Collaboration in the Humanities initiative
funded through Emory University's Presidential Woodruff Fund, in collaboration
with the Office of the Provost. Series producers are Natasha Trethewey and
Allen Tullos.
Presentation Sections:
