Organised by The British Library
Explore the life-enhancing practice of keeping a journal.
Join biographer Frances Bingham and your fellow journal-keepers to be inspired by the great journal writers of the past, and discover ways to create your own ‘treasury of moments’.
During the course you will explore journal writing, both as a writing process which helps develop a unique voice and sensibility, and as a way of looking which hones the skills of observation and contemplation.
The course will feature a special show-and-tell session with Jeremy Jenkins, Curator of Emerging Media, Contemporary British & Irish Published Collections, who will show you a selection of Artist’s Books from our collection. Getting up close to these beautiful and inspiring items, you will use them as a starting point to consider the ways in which journals inspire other art forms, and alternative forms of journal-keeping, including visual methods. They will also inform a discussion on keeping a journal with a specific theme such as time, season or place.
Previous experience
None required, the course is suitable for anybody with an interest in keeping a journal, with previous writing experience or not.
Tutor
Frances Bingham is an experienced writer of creative non-fiction, author of Polari Prize shortlisted biography Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life and Journey from Winter: Selected Poems of Valentine Ackland, as well as published fiction including The Principle of Camouflage. Her plays have been produced on BBC Radio 4 and at Arcola Theatre London, and she has also published poetry, most recently London Panopticon. Frances has worked in archives with the original journals of several Modernist writers (including Sylvia Townsend Warner), and given talks and readings for BBC Radio 4, the British Library, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, National Poetry Library, Southbank Centre’s Literature and Spoken Word Programme, and the V&A. She is currently researching a book about writers and their journals.