Tuesday 26th May 2022 at 7.30pm in the Spirit Room at
Peepo
Present: Sue, Stuart, Adam, Liz, Martin, Alex, Tanya and Jayne
Apologies: Jennie,
Marie, Kath
Chair: Liz
We began promptly (!!) by welcoming our two new members
Tanya and Jayne. Welcome again!!
We then recorded our congratulations to HTW member, Kath
Norgrove for the public recognition of her hard work for Severn Trent Water and
Sustainable Bridgnorth’s ‘Prevent Pointless Plastic’ campaign through her selection
as one of the Baton Bearers in the Queen’s Baton Relay for the Commonwealth
Games which opens on Friday. We shared the Shropshire Star report of her
achievements and took them away to compose little somethings which we can post on
our blogspot to celebrate her achievement. The first tribute will be published
on Friday 29th July to coincide with the Games opening. HTW members
can send in additional tributes (hightownwriters@gmail.com) to be published as the games go ahead. Kath
will be there staffing a water point!
We directed our new members towards our blogspot – which has
now accrued quite a volume of material.
hightownwriters.blogspot.com
At this point Alex, one of our original members appeared, and was warmly welcomed ‘home’. We hope he – and other ‘old’ members will return now that the pandemic fear is ending and things are getting back to normal.
Since Alex had last been with us we have developed our
blogspot initially as a focus to keep us going through lockdowns and now as an
archive for members writing. We asked all members to look through – and comment
upon if they wish to – the writing on the blogspot and to choose their favourite
5 poems and 5 bits of prose produced by HTW
members with a view to winnowing out some of our best writing for a
publication.
We decided in principle to hold a Sunday afternoon garden ‘party’
meeting before the evenings begin to close in where people can share their
favourite pieces of writing – both their own and from things they have read on
the website. We would invite all members, past, lapsed, want-to-be and
present!! And we would think about how to mark our tenth anniversary in 2024.
Moving on
We introduced our new members to the ‘workshop’ element of HTW.
Liz had borrowed a ‘warm-up’ activity from a writing workshop she had attended
at this year’s Hay Festival. It was titled ‘Your Story Matters’ and was a
stream of consciousness exercise to write continuously for 2 minutes on each of
the following prompts:
1.
Regret
2.
The Fork in the Road
3.
An Old Friend Resurfaces
4.
A Debt is Paid
5.
A Route Home
After 10 – more like 15 minutes – we had all written quite a
lot – including Martin who arrived just in time to NOT miss the warm up
activity 😊. Congratulations to Tanya and Jayne who both
rose to the intimidating challenge of writing something immediately and in public
and which was shared. Well done. There were some really interesting thoughts on
regret: Stuart wrote, “I am what I am. You are what you choose to be,” and a
lot more besides. Tanya - who is
probably our youngest member wisely wrote, “Growing up, never regret anything;
to regret is to learn.” Jayne shared her thoughts about when a debt is paid to
forget how one was wronged. Sue wrote about finding her route home to
retirement. Adam and Alex shared a variety of thoughts on each prompts whilst
Liz and Martin linked each prompt in short stories – or in Martin’s case a
hilarious construction saga of his new garden patio.
Our prepared pieces of writing were prompted by both the
June and the July writing themes. Congratulations to Jayne and Tanya again for
being brave enough to bring some writing to their first meeting. They had both
opted for the July theme to expand on this statement from Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy and create a piece of writing:
‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way’
Jayne had written a long story – which we hope she will
share with us on the blogspot so that we can read it all – about siblings who
are orphaned when their mother dies in an accident whilst shopping leaving them
under the care of their father who rapidly disintegrates without his wife.
Tanya wrote about the power of a loving foster grandfather
who steps in to care for a six year old child whose family life had been
blighted by domestic abuse and violence.
Stuart also wrote on this theme to continue his iron age saga
by bringing us the story of Estril, Uedica’s niece, who had been taken into
Uedica’s family after her mother had died from a ‘potion’ addiction and her
father had died from a ‘potion’ overdose. Another of Uedica’s adventures “Close
Call” (inspired by our June writing theme) can be found on the HTW on Monday 1st
August.
Liz also shared writing inspired by June’s theme – in her
case to write on from a Mary Shelley, Frankenstein quote: We sat late. “We
could not tear ourselves away from each other, nor persuade each other to say
the word ‘Farewell!’” Liz’s story
was set in 2062 and was about two old friends who had survived to the ancient
age of 110. Their middle aged granddaughters had brought them together to share
a virtual reality re-creation of their student lives in 1970. So many friends had
passed away and SO much had changed over the years - they really didn’t want to
say farewell to each other that evening.
Sue – who has just retired - wound up our prepared writing
section with a tribute poem she had written for all her Year 11 pupils who are
leaving school now – along with their teacher!
We had time for another piece of writing so we wound up the
meeting with an old standby – the word maze. We each came up with a word.
Unfortunately Liz’s hearing is not all it should be and she misheard Adam’s
word ‘bottle’ as ‘brothel’. Great mirth all round. Our 8 words were orange,
retirement, melancholy, bottle, brothel, change, friendship and glass.
There was some super funny writing from everyone there.
The meeting ended with a plea to send any pieces of writing you
want published on the blog spot to hightownwriters@gmail.com
We finished our meeting at 9.30pm and hope that the August
meeting will be one everyone can attend even if they arrive later – we can
finish later on these summer evenings.
Please send any corrections to the above minutes to hightownwriters@gmail.com
Hightown Writers Workshop – next workshop meeting
Tuesday 23rd August 2022
At 7.30pm
The Spirit Room, Peepo’s Italian Restaurant,
Chair: Liz
Writing Theme: Summertime or anything inspired by the
Commonwealth Games eg Baton Bearer.
No comments:
Post a Comment