August 2023 Meeting Minutes

 Hightown Writers’ Workshop Meeting

Tuesday 22nd August 2023, 7.0pm in Peepo’s Spirit Room

Chair: Liz

Present: Adam, Sue, Ann, Alex and Liz  

Apologies:  Jennie, Marie, Irena, John A-S, Jayne,

We noted John A-S's letter and wish him well with his construction project. We look forward to seeing him when his brain and his way is clear of builders. We will happily keep him in the loop of HTW news. When all is done perhaps John will host a meeting at his place so that we can all savour the marvellous views!

Moving on to the substance of the meeting we were happy that five members had made the August meeting given how low attendance can be during the summer holiday period and were particularly happy to welcome Ann, who joins us having already sent in a contribution on ‘Bells’ – we were delighted to meet her in person. We also hope that Peter who has found us through the Hightown Writers Workshop Blog will come along to one of  the September meetings of our merry band of writers!

We talked about the many writing competitions there are and were interested in a local one:  Ironbridge Poetry Competition 2023 – Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists which offers a bonus prize to anyone living with a TF postcode. Its closing date is 17^th September 2023. Many of us are also intending attending the live mic poetry event and sonnet and haiku workshops of the | Bridgnorth Music and Arts Festival (bridgnorthfestival.org.uk) which are holding this Thursday and Friday in the library.

Liz reported that she had made a start on selecting work from our blog to go into a 2024 tenth anniversary publication. She suggested that it be structured in a 160 page almanac form containing a mix of writing for each month of the year. Alex recommended investigating  Bookmundo | What's your story? as potential publishers for our book. We hope that as many people as possible will be able to attend the mid-September meeting at The Crown pub on THURSDAY 14^th September – and bring along their personal favourite pieces of both theirs and other members’ writing, plus any experience they might have of self publishing in order to get the project rolling. There’s a work table in the Crown which will make such endeavour easier.

We are also looking forward to the new independent bookshop opening in Bridgnorth in the old Tui travel agents. Booka Bridgnorth is due to open its doors at the end of September 2023 building on their very successful venture in Oswestry.

Moving on to our workshop writing, we engaged in some ‘comfort zone’ warm-up writing – a word maze using the words grocery, blackness, market, sustainable and twinkling. Adam painted a sensory picture of  a Mediterranean port on a sultry night. Sue wrote topically about shop closures, following the closure of a national store chain her protagonist sought out the long established grocers on the High Street only to discover that they too were going out of business. Ann, Alex and Liz all set out on everyday journeys which ended mysteriously in unexpected settings with dangerous overtones.

Moving on to the our month’s writing theme – a sonnet written with a late summer theme – we found we had responded variously to the task!

Irena had sent in beautifully descriptive prose, Through The Portal, in which her visit to this year’s ‘Burwarton Show’ transports her back to her childhood, The ‘Westmorland Show’ and memories of other animals in her life, notably her lurcher, Harriet, and her horse, Tilly, and she marvelled at the connection between the young exhibitors at Burwarton and the animals in their care.

Ann had written a song about a ‘long ago day’ of late summer love when two youngsters meet up for an evening walk along the sea shore. Ann not only wrote the song for us but she sang it too. It was hauntingly lovely and we hope she will repeat her performance for those who couldn’t be at this meeting.

Adam had tackled an old theme, an adult fairy tale with a twist, with a story about Nadia who  sets out on the A722 road, with Elton John’s ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ playing on the radio. The road has a local reputation of leading to an ancient Welsh ‘henge’ with the ability to transport people to different worlds. That becomes Nadia’s experience when a strange whirlwind drives her off the road. Read the story, The Yellow Brick Road, on the blog to see how it ends!

Alex’s sonnet Serenity painted a magical summery world of fireflies, and crooked trees yet held a very ‘Alexy’ twist in the final rhyming couplet – Lego was involved!

Sue’s sonnet My Late Summer Garden described the flowers that were over and the late summer blooming of ‘buddleias, butterflies, blackberries and bees’ which bring her great pleasure.

Liz’s summer had taken her back to Nigeria where she had lived for 17 years. It was the rainy season and the skies had been stormy and the temperatures a ‘cool’ 27 celsius – very different to her first experience of the country in the early 1970s when the future had seemed very sunny following the civil war reconciliation and the prospect of prosperity as oil revenues came on stream. Liz’s sonnet Bronzed Off reflected her disappointment with the way things turned out through the metaphor of Nigeria’s famous bronze artefacts.

We finished our meeting at 9pm

The writing theme for the next month is:

Write no more than 1,000 words of fiction, non-fiction or narrative verse that contains this line in the middle of your writing:

“I wasn’t going to give up that easily.”

Next Monthly Meeting – 7pm Tuesday 26^th September in Peepo’s Spirit Room.

Mid monthly meeting to discuss tenth anniversary publication etc – 7pm Thursday 14^th September in The Crown, High Street, Bridgnorth.