MAY 2022 Meeting

Hightown Writer’s Workshop Meeting Minutes 

Tuesday 24th May 2022 at 7.30pm in the Spirit Room at Peepo 

Present: Stuart, Adam, Liz, Martin and Jennie  

Apologies: Sue 

Chair: Liz 

We got going by 8pm … which was fine as people had travelled in from various far-away places and began by congratulating HTW member Kath who has been chosen as a baton bearer for the Commonwealth Games! Well done Kath from us all!!! We also shared Andy's reminder about 'someone-we-know's' appearance on Ch4tv tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9pm with Richard Hammond on Britain's Beautiful Rivers.

 We chose an old favourite ‘warm-up’ activity – the word maze – which was to write for 10-15minutes using random words suggested by members. Those words were stupor, weird, sleepy, elegant, bar, sign, wine and pterodactyl! Most of us predictably conjured up scenarios involving bars and over-indulgence which led variously to time-slips, aliens, ending up on the south coast but Jennie dug deep into her Kafkaesque consciousness to imagine waking up and finding herself metamorphosed into a pterodactyl!! Her amazing 15-minute poem follows next on the blog. 

We shared our writing on the May theme of finding an egg in the forest and taking it home and seeing what hatches.

Adam’s The Crystal found his first-person protagonist and a friend watching an alien ship beam down something into the forest which turns out to be a translucent crystal egg which when held projects horrifying images of future global catastrophes to the two watchers. They decide to leave the egg where it lay and covered it with leaves.

Martin tested out a creepy soundtrack for the performance of his poem, Poached Egg Surprise, which was a cautionary tale not to remove objects from their proper place, especially when they are part of a set and especially so when there’s a scary Mamma Spider who deals with egg thieves! Martin’s poems, as always, leave his listeners spellbound, especially this time with the new sound effects feature!

Stuart proved that our random writing themes can inspire writers who are tackling the mammoth task of writing a novel. Stuart’s iron age saga now has a cameo performance by an elderly warrior, Breigh, known as Grandpa the storyteller, who captivates the children of the village with tales of how heroes come in all shapes and sizes and then stuns them with the story of the magical cockatrice who hatched from an egg a child found in the forest. To the children’s horrified fascination it turns parents to stone with its deadly stare leaving the children to fend for themselves. Luckily an unlikely and tiny saviour hero saves the day.

Jennie shared her ‘That House With The Red Roof’ poem which she had written last month and Liz, Martin and Adam re-shared their red roof writing as well.

Sue has been with us in spirit if restrained by work from joining us. She tackled April’s warm up triolet task with her observation of an unexpected visitor on her urban front lawn! Discover his identity in her poem on the blog-spot next week.

Liz also shared a limerick, inspired by Martin's limerick writing, about her attempts at decorating and a triolet about revisiting childhood haunts.

We reminded ourselves that there is a 'Themes' list on the side bar of the blog where there are many ideas from previous meetings which writers may want to revisit as well as or instead of the current month's writing theme!

We shared Brian Bilston's latest offering - his take on Rudyard Kipling's 'IF' as applied to Number 10 and party-gate - and talked about what makes a poem. On Wednesday Martin shared with the group Brian Bilston's 'rules' for writing poetry. Useful and thank you Martin. (See 'Poet laureate of Twitter' Brian Bilston: 'I'm still pretty shy and mostly unconfident' (inews.co.uk) )

We wound up our meeting at 10pm and hope that the June meeting will be one everyone who works can attend even if they arrive later – we can finish later.

 

Hightown Writers Workshop – next workshop meeting

Tuesday 28th June 2022

At 7.30pm

The Spirit Room, Peepo’s Italian Restaurant,

Chair:  Jennie

Writing Theme:  Another old favourite – Open a book at Chapter Three. Look on the 3^rd page of Ch3. Count down to the 3^rd line on that 3^rd page. Use that line to inspire your writing!