Writing Memoir through Form with Eileen Casey

Course Summary

Isabel Allende maintains “A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth”. Through poetry, prose, fiction and non-fiction, this course highlights the different ‘mirrors’ through which people view and reflect on the past and how individuals use these mirrors to forge their own unique ‘truth’. A close focus on various elements of the genre results in memoir’s primary aim: to use personal history, colourful characters, sensory narratives and emotional depth.

Course Outline

Weeks One & Two: Building a memoir repertoire. Various genre in memoir will be explored with a focus on diary, letter, article format plus writing for radio. Research is used as a useful portal.

Weeks Three & Four: Memoir explored through characterisation helps to maintain an emotional barometer which allows factual details combine with elements of fiction to heighten or lower the temperature of real life.

Each session will end with a playful, creative poetic exercise, key element of which is to open the storehouse of memory.

Course Outcomes

Participants will receive a solid foundation on which to build their own personal memoir. Overall, participants will be confident regarding structure and how to navigate the memoir journey in a manageable way i.e. how not to be swamped in the tyranny of information. Attention will also be given to participants’ writings.

Eileen Casey’s work appears in major anthologies by Dedalus, New Island, Faber & Faber, among others. Memoir work broadcast on Sunday Miscellany, A Living Word. A Fascination with Fabric, a memoir series of essays is published by Arlen House. Eileen Casey’s sixth poetry collection Bog Treasure (Arlen House) was published in 2021. Among her awards are: A Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Emerging Fiction and a Katherine and Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship. She completed an M.Phil in Creative Writing from The Oscar Wilde Centre, The School of English, Trinity College, Dublin.