ABSTRACT
Childhood is something we all hold within us: a set of memories, a collection of ideas. Our own childhoods were lived by us and are variously remembered, though usually not in a linear way. Memories are filtered through the lens of how we have learnt as adults to think of childhood. This chapter focuses on the interpretive-poetic approach, an approach to qualitative research that is interested in what is happening in a particular social setting, what those events might mean to those involved, and how participants engage with one another. It explores Erickson's phrase "make the familiar strange", which may have been coined by poet Friedrich von Hardenberg and circulated later by poets such as William Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot. Vignette creation was recursive, beginning first with a child's poem, describing its features and structures from the codes from the poetry scheme and continually returning to the hard copy of the poem.
