“Picnic,” a poem by Lisa Hiton (Poetry 2011) has been featured in Hayden’s Ferry Review along with a Contributor Spotlight and essay by the author. Lisa writes that the poem was inspired by her time with mentor Carolyn Forché in Thessaloniki and the island, Thassos, in Greece:
“Spending time in the plaza where the Jews were gathered and at the Jewish Museum in Salonika, I began to understand the pain of history, which I get to experience because I somehow am alive. Writing this poem and other poems that address Jewish identity and culture—especially as an American Jew traveling around Europe, and perhaps also as a writer contemplating how to reconcile the 20th century—has forced me to a place of nostos, to remembering the fear I had as a child when learning about the Holocaust, and the kind of self-mythologizing and story making I participated in to begin measuring myself against the ideas of that portion of history.”
You can read the poem and the corresponding essay here: http://haydensferryreview.blogspot.com/2014/01/contributor-spotlight-lisa-hiton.html
Lisa Hiton is a Chicago native. She holds an MFA in Poetry from BU and an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, Indiana Review, Guernica and DMQ Review, among others. Her poem “Tuesday” was reprinted in the spring 2013 issue of 236 Magazine, BU’s creative writing alumni journal. She has received fellowships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the MU Writing Workshops in Thassos. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
