July 2023 Meeting Minutes

***HIGHTOWN WRITERS’ WRAP-UP FOR TUESDAY, 25^TH JULY 2023***

Venue: Peepo

Timeslot: 7 pm till around 9.30 pm

Crossed t’s and dotted i’s: Liz, Irena, Jo, Sue, Adam, me (Alex)

Nay-sayers: Tony T, Tony H, Jennie, Marie, Stuart, John A-S

Your compère for the evening: Me

 

Well, I was back in the chairman’s saddle tonight and devised a couple of activities for the group to perform. We have a new member, Jo, who is a retired teacher – which does not surprise me, as HTW’s penchant for teachers has been well-documented. Welcome, Jo!

 

Now then, regarding the group’s tenth-anniversary book, Liz would like each of us to select three favourite poems that we’ve written and a favourite prose piece that we’ve written. She feels that it would be nice for the book to have an almanac style, and that sounds good to me.

 

We’ve allocated a mid-month meeting to discuss the project, and this has been scheduled for Thursday, 14^th September, from 7 pm till 10 pm, at The Crown. We’d really appreciate it if the group’s members could circle the date in their diaries, as we’d like a good turnout for it. We felt that The Crown would provide a more suitable venue, as it has a meeting table, and, in addition to that, it gives us three hours of natter time!

 

Right – on with the proceedings…

 

Tonight saw the debut of “Transferred Transcendence”. The object of this activity was to write a hundred words that incorporated three transferred epithets.

 

So what’s a “transferred epithet”, then?

 

I’m glad you asked. An epithet is simply an unnecessary-but-correct word for an adjective or an adjectival phrase. A transferred epithet is when you deliberately misplace an adjective that you would normally use to refer to a person or an animal, transferring it to an object. For example:

 

He donned a clumsy jacket. [As opposed to Clumsily, he donned a jacket.]

 

She walked across the nervous bridge. [As opposed to Nervously, she walked across the bridge.]

 

He drove an angry motorbike. [As opposed to Angrily, he drove the motorbike.]

 

Got it…?

 

The group put a good effort into this and produced some interesting compositions. Liz’s piece was particularly descriptive, and Adam’s piece nailed it. Nice one, Adam!

 

Then it was time for our second activity of the evening: “Pass the Piece”. We’ve done this exercise before. This time, I asked each group member to continue this passage:

 

Mike groaned, and felt his left eye. It was throbbing, and it stung quite badly – in fact, he could barely see out of it.

 

After catching his girlfriend flirting with a man outside the club, he’d lost it, grabbed the bloke round the throat and thrown him to the ground. Unfortunately, though, that had been as good as it had got for him, as his opponent had soon recovered and then knocked him out. Well, Mike wasn’t to know that the fellah was an amateur middleweight.

 

He staggered to his feet and surveyed his surroundings. What time was it?

 

 

Everyone got into the spirit of this and produced some amusing results. Liz had to depart partway through it, though, owing to her phone’s ringing; nevertheless, as soon as she returned, she read out her contribution, leaving us with the protagonist in a bewildered state, and the smell of bacon in the air…

 

Next up, we revealed how we’d interpreted last month’s homework theme: “The Love of My Life”.

 

Adam recited a rhyming poem about his eight-year-old black-and-white cat. I particularly liked the line that compared her dexterity to that of a gymnast’s. Nice simile. Afterwards, he informed us that his cat is rather lively, and that recently she had brought home a dead bat!

 

Sue read out a prose piece about a couple sorting through a loved one’s possessions. After reading it, she informed us that it was based upon her late father, as he loved horses and had accumulated a lot of horse memorabilia.

 

Irena provided us with a poem that she had recently completed, as she is still working on the homework task. It was inspired by her Chelmarsh walks, and detailed winter’s passing. The piece appealed to the senses, and contained phrases such as “thick mist”, “silhouetted trees” and “iced sunflowers”. Irena is very poetically minded.

 

Liz also recited a poem, written in haikus – a speciality of hers – about Barbie rejecting Ken. This somewhat unorthodox topic had been inspired by her and her family’s recent visit to the Majestic to see the new Barbie film. They dressed in pink for the occasion. Apart from her husband, of course who declined the invitation to go.

 

And then, I read out a rather daft – is there any other kind…? – limerick about members of an ill-fated couple, who’d been speaking to each other on the internet. (Well, Facebook didn’t scan!)

 

Peepo’s was generous with the time, and so, after business had concluded, we left of our own volition. Respect.

 

 

WRITING THEMES FOR NEXT MONTH

 

Well, literature-lovers, I’m giving you two options, as not everyone likes poetry. So, for the would-be Shakespeares:

 

• Write a late-summer-themed sonnet.

 

At the moment, there are quite a few Shakespearean sonnets on the blog, so it would be nice to see some Petrarchans and some written entirely in rhyming couplets (ie, see/bee, give/live, etc).

 

And for the prose peddlers:

 

• Write a fairy-story-with-a-twist.

 

I’m determined for us to add a few more works to that category, as I think it’s a novel idea – and a novel category…

 

 

FUTURE MEETINGS

 

The next meeting will take place at The Crown, on Thursday, 10^th August, from 7 pm till 10 pm – we need a chairman for it, though; any volunteers…?

 

The one after that will take place at the Peeps, on Tuesday, 22^nd August, at 7 pm, and Liz will be chairing it.

 

And then, as I mentioned earlier, the big one – to discuss our book! – will take place at The Crown, on Thursday, 14^thSeptember, from 7 pm till 10 pm, with Liz in the chair. We’d really appreciate a good turnout for this meeting. There's plenty of time and space at The Crown -- and that meeting table is LARGE -- so we can take it easy.

 

Adios!

Alex