Every life needs a location. It would be impossible to write a biography of Napoleon without describing his exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba; the Parsonage at Haworth is as much a part of the Brontës’ story as their literary work. A life of the artist Frida Kahlo would be unthinkable without a description of Mexico.
Ordinary lives also rely on place. If you’re writing about your grandmother’s time as a servant, the “big house” will loom large in your description. Soho in the 1960s might have played a key part in your parents’ early life or perhaps a more rural landscape influenced the person you want to write about. Even if your subject chose not to record their impressions of the world they inhabited, you will still need to create it for your reader. That re-creation may involve a surprising amount of imagination.
But, while people need places, the writer faces the challenge of balancing the influence of one on the other. An anachronistic, or inaccurate, description of the village of Haworth can distort our view of the family who lived in The Parsonage. Place is not just about description; it should also add historical and cultural context. We need to see the landscape as our ancestors did and, if possible, to hear, smell, touch and taste it.
The best travel writers use all their senses to describe a landscape. In the past, this genre has been criticised as being the domain of the white, privileged male who described his experience from a colonial point of view. Today, many travel writers are female. The domain of the travel writer has changed too, and is as likely to be a “psychogeographical” exploration of the M25 orbital road as a more traditional description of a market in Marrakesh. The journey itself may provide the backbone for the story – as in Waterlog, The Old Ways and As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, but encounters with other people and interactions with nature and place provide tension and “plot”. Our imposition on that landscape has, in recent years, provided the main emphasis for writers concerned about the environment.
Whether landscape and place are at the heart of your writing, or you want to give your memoir, or other form of non-fiction, a strong sense of place, this course will introduce you to new techniques and expose you to ideas that will help to invigorate and refresh your work.
