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As publisher of State
Street Press-which produces a well-known poetry-chapbook series-and a
literary critic whose bi-annual reviews of new poetry appear in the Georgia
Review, poet Kitchen brings to creative nonfiction her experience with
poetic stanzas, which she says allows her to shift quickly from one direction
to another.
She describes her
essay, "Haworth," as "an exploration in time and memory." In "Haworth,"
she says, she attempts to reflect her vision of the dynamic relationship
between experience, memory and perception.
"What I was trying
to do was to get three kinds of history together-the history of place;
my own history, a present-tense moment; and a history of how the authors
[the Brontės] saw the place, or might have seen it."
Kitchen thinks memory
is a central issue in much creative nonfiction being produced today, and
predicts the genre will only grow, and that readers' questions about the
genre's name will become moot.
"There's been an
influx of memoir by relatively ordinary people-by people whose lives are
not necessarily of interest, but the writing of the lives is of interest,"
she says. "In five years, no one will be asking the question about the
genre's name because it will have defined itself more. In 10 years, the
reading public will be as receptive to creative nonfiction as it is now
to a strict, straight nonfiction book."

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