POETRY

Professor Lisa Hiton on writing workshop philosophy

Visiting assistant professor Lisa Hiton feels drawn to teaching because of its similarities to writing. Lisa Hiton’s obsession these days is slow discourse. Waking up late and sipping on a hot cup of coffee in bed. Sitting in the Amtrak quiet car and gazing at the moving figures out the window with a pen and paper in hand. Writing 20 pages of prose up in the Adirondacks and even more at ThreeBirds Cafe in Easton. “If you’re an artist, you have to be ready for a very slow discourse for your life,” Hiton said. “I never stopped writing. I never stopped sending my book out despite how many rejections I was getting.” Hiton, visiting assistant professor of English and creative writer in residence, was first drawn to writing through this concept of slow discourse. While pursuing her undergraduate degree in film at Boston University, she took a poetry course with writer Maggie Dietz that changed her whole trajectory. “I’m not a person who believes in fate, but something about BU is a lot of what I would call ‘celestial choreography,’” she said. At the New York Summer Writers Institute the following summer, Hiton witnessed the magic of poetry in action. Listening to Louise Glük read a series of unpublished works among an intimate crowd of poets and learners made her envision a new life. “I just remember walking back under the night sky thinking, whatever this feeling is, whatever it is about the other people who are dedicated to this kind of slow discourse, this is where I need to be right now,” Hiton said. Hiton went on to get her master of fine arts in poetry at Boston University under the mentorship of Glük and poet Robert Pinsky . Since then, she published her debut book of poems, “ Afterfeast ,” which won the Dorset Prize at Tupelo Press, and two chapbooks. Staring at a blank page is the same as staring at an empty classroom, according to Hiton. That’s why she teaches. “It’s the same muscle to me,” Hiton said. “I can’t not.” Hiton teaches in what […]

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