U.S. Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, shared her poetry at the Creighton Center for Health and Policy Ethics’ Women & Health Lecture, leaving her audience with the sense that they had attended more than just a lecture.
This year marked the 23rd year of the lecture, which the Creighton University Nursing, Women in Science and Medicine, and Committee on the Status of Women programs co-sponsored with Alegent+Creighton Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska, Physicians Mutual, the Omaha Public Library, the Joslyn Art Museum and The Bookworm.
The Women and Health Lecture of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics hosts nationally recognized speakers to engage the community on topics that challenge, transform and inspire.
Each year, the Women and Health Lecture Advisory Board — consisting of members of the Creighton community and the Omaha Public Library — chooses a new speaker. Speakers range from sociologists, politicians, advocates, lawyers, philosophers, judges, theologians, nurses, psychologists, physicians and novelists.
“This year marked the first year that we had a poet as the Women and Health Lecture,” said Marybeth E. Goddard, manager of the Center for Health Policy and Ethics. “Natasha was a perfect fit for the lecture and more than met the lecture’s mission — to challenge, transform and inspire.”
Trethewey is originally from Gulfport, Miss. and is the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States. Her poetry seeks to explore the private moments of our lives by placing them in the broader context of history. Trethewey examines the link between her personal life, her family relationships and the Civil Rights Movement, particularly in Mississippi.
“This focus on the ‘historical imagination’ is a way to move beyond immediate experience in order to discover the larger implications of our lives within the continuum of history,” Trethewey explained.
“[Trethewey’s] poems dig beneath the surface of history — personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago — to explore the human struggles that we all face,” Librarian of Congress James Billington wrote.
From elegies for her deceased mother and living father, to her “response to The Help,” Trethewey’s poetry reading critically examined the issue of race inequality in Mississippi while using a variety of poetical settings.
In describing her poetry’s particular focus on Civil Rights issues in Mississippi, including the story of her parents’ controversial marriage in the 1960s — Trethewey’s father is white and her mother is black — Trethewey explained that the suffering her parents and many others endured during the Civil Rights era was what “hurt” her into poetry.
For example, Trethewey’s “Help, 1968,” examines the personal relationship she shares with her mother and the way they fit into society as black mother and white daughter. Her book, Thrall, examines race across time and space, relationships within families and, specifically, the relationship she shares with her father.
In her response to the question, “Why poetry?” at the end of the lecture, Trethewey responded, “Poetry asks us to listen differently. It asks us to cross the most difficult differences between us and others. It asks us to listen deeply.”
The Witherspoon Concert Hall at the Joslyn Art Museum was packed with a good mix of students and community members, all enthralled by Trethewey’s poetry.
“It was absolutely beautiful,” Arts & Sciences senior Lauren Roknich said. “Her poetry breathes life into issues that I think need to be addressed.”