WORDWORKERS MAY 15th

Two hours just isn't enough time with this creative and gracious incarnation of the writing group.

You know, the group has a different feel at different time, depending on who the group-members are and how they gel or work together. I am really enjoying the current mix of talents and personalities.

So, we didn't have time to do everything I hoped, but what we did do...

First of all we congratulated John M. on getting his MA, and sympathised with him not being able to take a knife to the presentation! He talked, quite poignantly, about how Covid had changed his life for the better. He shared his poem about poppies... which is in my mind even now!

Rosalind shared a poem she'd had published, then introduced us to her first pamphlet (from 2002), The Beholder's Eye. I read the first poem - about a ditch - and decided that alone was worth the price of the whole pamphlet.

We talked, briefly, about QR codes; how to make them and how to use them. I'll probably go back to that in a little more depth.

Isobel talked about how many views her poem about the first Sunday in May was getting online. And she read a poem about Scottish place names, which we all agreed Visit Scotland should pay a lot of money for.

The On The Spot exercise was to write about the sort of group that might (in this reality or an adjacent one) used a meeting-space like ours.

Mary wrote/talked about a mental health group. John B. Came up with the brilliant idea of Rhythmic Gymnasticts for Oldies. Deirdre talked about the psychology of seating, which surely must affect every group. Bobby wrote about the private mental battles behind every public group encounter...

We also had Rosalind's poem avout the unhappy family dynamic surrounding a mother's death - which raised the topic of writing from our own experiences or adopting personas.

Moira wrote about finding a message in birdsong and carrying it over into life. The word she found for the bird-call was just perfect, I thought

Not everyone got to read and I am sorry about that. There might also have been some readings I haven't talked about here. If so, just know it's because I was too engrossed to take notes.

I read out two of Jim Carruth's poems (which were roundly praised), showed how they "progressed", and asked for something likewise by way of homework.

And we could easily have filled another two hours!