Ordinary Hazards

Ordinary Hazards by Nikki Grimes is a memoir in verse. A memoir is a narrative about a person’s life told from their perspective. It differs from an autobiography in that an autobiography covers the entire length of a person’s life, while memoirs focus on a specific time in the author’s life. Additionally, chronology and facts are important in an autobiography, while a memoir is more subjective and based on memory rather than objectivity (Dukes, Jessica. “What Is a Memoir?” Celadon Books). The use of verse, or elements of poetry, in memoir writing is not new or uncommon, as the two genres have a number of similarities and complementary features.

A reliance on memory is one of the commonalities between poetry and memoir, according to writer Jill Bialosky. In a piece for the Kenyon Review, Bialosky explores how the architecture of poetry and memoir are similar. She notes how writing poetry is intuitive, such that the “truth or memory in a poem leads to unlocking another” (“An Essay on Poetry and Memoir by Jill Bialosky.