Memoir Project

For my creative project regarding my research on memoir, I think I'm going to do something pertaining to slam poetry. Since the nature of memoir is self-revelatory, I think it would work well to transfer my research and insights over to this evolving genre. The hard part is going to be writing a poem that can be powerful enough to be read in the same way that slam poetry is. I don't know if I'll be able to do it successfully, but I'm going to give it a shot.

As far as the video/performance presentation goes, I think I want to do something similar to this video that Amber shared:

Obviously it will be on a much smaller scale, since I am not that skilled with technology. I might even end up doing a sort of word art, like the lyric videos Kenna shared in this post.

I'm not completely sure of what content I will choose to focus on in the poem. I'm thinking right now that I'll do a combination of my own experience and the experience of those I've read about in the memoirs I've been studying, with the overarching theme of the poem being what it means to remember something and why we care about other people's memories in the first place.

This video is a powerful and haunting example of the poet putting themselves in someone else's shoes and sharing a poem that is based on actual events, but takes emotional and creative liberties.

I don't think I know how to get angry and passionate about a cause this eloquently, but I would like to model my work on this performance and its ability to address a larger issue through weaving anecdotal events and larger cultural issues.

And if my project could come anywhere near the emotional rawness of this poem, I would be very satisfied indeed.

I also think combining elements of this project in my own work would be really effective and help balance out my project.