Story Poems as Memoir Tool

Want to know more about story poems as a tool for writing memoir? Listen to this Story Circle Network podcast with Janet Riehl.

Story Circle Network’s Memoir Conference

Go here to sign-up for Story Circle Network’s 2011 Conference “Stories from the Heart.” This fifth national memoir gathering in Texas February 5-7 is a boost for women with stories to tell.

The Kindest Cut

Round tomato with a tough skin.
Sharp knife. Ouch.
My skin not as tough as the tomato
Blood and tomatoes are both red.
Thus began my afternoon adventure. Not at all what I’d planned. The index finger on my left hand bled like a stuck pig soaking through cotton ball after cotton ball. For 1 1/2 hours it bled [...]

Mary Ruth Donnelly reviews Sharman Apt Russell Memoir: “Standing in the Light”

MEMOIR MOVES READER INTO LIGHT
In Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist, Sharman Apt Russell invites the reader on a quest to resolve the tensions inevitable to one who proposes to live consciously: living in the nature of the beautiful Gila Valley, New Mexico versus maintaining a job and children’s activities in [...]

Riehlife Review: “Twenty Chickens for a Saddle,” by Robyn Scott

I reviewed this book for Story Circle Book Reviews (reviewing books by, for, and about women) and the review appears on Amazon. It’s good for the book and the whole shebang whenever you mark a review “helpful” there. Love it, if you would…..Janet
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A Coming of Age Story of a Girl and a Country
While set [...]

Smith Magazine’s Six-word Memoir Project (as heard on NPR)…and now…Story Circle Network Podcast

Six-word memoir was hot this year. And, it’s fun as well.
Some time back I phoned in my 6-word memoir:
Country girl roamed.
Home grazing sweetest.

and my 6-word description of “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary”
A downhome family
lovestory beyond death.

for the May Story Circle Network Podcast. Frankly, I’d forgotten all about it. Then, this morning on the Independent Authors Guild [...]

Amazon’s Democratic Jungle: Case study, Wole Soyinka’s new memoir “You Must Set Forth At Dawn” with 5 Amazon comments, dissassembled

First off, let me say I consider that the reader section on the Amazon book product pages are, for the most part, best termed as “comments” rather than “reviews”—which usually would be rather over-stating the case.
Secondly, I am frequently appalled by the casual way in which readers in these comment sections reveal their ignorance, not [...]

Sorting upon the return home…Soyinka on my mind

I have returned from a journey. This journey has moved me further along my journey.
Winter Woods. Then creeks and ponds. Rolling Illinois borderlands. More winter wood flash past. Small Illinois towns where one could stop awhile and spend time in geneological research.

I could say I got lost. I could say I missed the turn. [...]

Kathleen Norris on Connections…poets and farmers…connections and rain gauges

Kathleen Norris
(Photo by Gregory Yamamoto from the Barclay Agency)
Telling a poet
not to look for connections
is like telling a farmer
not to look at the rain gauge
after a storm.
–page 171, “Dakota: A Spiritual Geography,” by Kathleen Norris
(my lineation for emphasis)
Click here to read a marvelous interview between Homiletics and Kathleen Norris.