Memoir and Poetry

I mentioned before that I have been following some Creative Writing courses over the past few years. Although I’ve written a few short stories, I’ve discovered that what I really like to write is poetry and memoir.

Recently I have been attending some online courses organised by The Arvon Foundation. One such course was a day Workshop on memoir by the writer, Richard Beard. During the Workshop he told us about a project he has developed online called the Universal Turing Machine. This project is well worth looking at and I won’t attempt to describe how ambitious a project it is, anyone who is interested can look it up.

From Richard Beard I got the idea of writing a 1000 word piece on a year in my life. If I did every year I would have an 80,000 word tome but I am starting simply. I have already written one piece on 1947, the first year of my life, and I have started to write a piece about 1963 when I saw The Beatles in Bradford. I am just going to take it one piece of writing at a time. I’m not going to attempt to write chronologically but just to choose years which stand out for me. 1000 words are just right for me. My short stories are never more than 1500 so, I’ll keep it short and simple.

So, where does poetry fit in? Writing poetry is something which is very new for me and I enjoy following forms but I’ve also experimented with free verse. I have already written a short three stanza poem to a company my first piece of memoir and if I feel inspired I may write a poem to accompany each years memoir. This will only happen if I feel inspired!

Finally, I have signed up for a course on Arvon at Home which takes place during the month of October online, one day a week. The theme is Memoir and Poetry and I am really looking forward to it.