September 2025 HTW Meeting

Bridgnorth Quayside - September Sunshine

Minutes of meeting held on Tuesday 23rd September 2025

6pm - 9pm at Peepo's Spirit Room

Present: Liz (chair), John, Jennie, Irena, Ruth, Adam, Sue, Michelle

Apologies: Suzie, Stuart, Marie, Kath, Andy, Fiona

We opened the meeting with a discussion about an earlier start time as Peepo's autumn closing time is 8pm. Phil says it's fine for us to stay until they lock up for the night - between 9 - 10pm. 

We will however adjust our starting time - 6.30pm for 7.0pm

We thanked Adventura aka Kath (in absentia) for managing to post a blog - whilst on holiday - about her cruise along the Danube delta and thanked Jennie for her 'Promise' story - Liz apologised for missing posting a blog from Irena. It will appear on Sunday 28th September. In August and September we have published one blog a week as opposed to at least one every other day from January to July this year. In October there is nothing scheduled. It's a significant drop. If people want to share their work, but find it difficult to do so, they can email it to hightownwriters@gmail.com and Liz will post it for them.

Kay shared details of a Poetry Slam she is organising in Presteigne at The Old School Hall, Hereford Street, (LD8) on Saturday 4th October -It's an evening open-mic event - starting time tbc. £5 entry and short poems if performing (30-40 lines max)

Jennie drew attention to upcoming events at the 'Poetry Pharmacy' in Bishops Castle . See:  Events in Bishops Castle – The Poetry Pharmacy

Ruth reported on Suzie's participation at the Shrewsbury poetry slam competition and Michelle reported on her performances in Ironbridge and Dudley and there was a discussion about the daunting nature of performative poetry.

We decided to postpone the next Saturday 11th October workshop until early January. Ruth will organise the January workshop on 'performance poetry and poetry slam techniques'. Date tbc.

Irena has started her Creative Writing MA course and offered to lead some of the later 2026 workshops on topics she's covering in her studies.

We shared our writing experiences during the past month which ranged from a writing retreat with no internet enabling some writing to be done every day (Ruth); writing a church history for its 175th anniversary and composing and performing a very folksy-hymn to celebrate the event (Sue); sci-fi novel writing (Adam); poetry performing and being published (Ruth, Suzie, Michelle); and course assignments (Irena). 

Jennie, Michelle and Ruth all wrote moving poems on the task to use metaphors and similes. Michelle wrote a liturgical exploration of the spirit, Ruth's poem 'The Cage' was a whole poem metaphor and Jennie's was a beautiful tribute to her mother who ran a Yorkshire shop and bakery in the mid twentieth century. Its details were vivid bringing back memories to us all.

The writing warm-up task was to write for 3 minutes a list of questions relating to 'Autumn' - as Monday was the autumn equinox. As ever we came up with dozens of different ideas.

The main writing task was to study a picture and write about what had happened in the five minutes before the picture was taken. The results ranged from broken personal and family relationships, dystopian menace, worn out teachers to surviving when a shark joins the action! The idea had been to think about using a flashback technique - which is the next writing task.

The meeting ended about 9.15pm.

NEXT MEETING: 

Tuesday 28th October 2025 in Peepo's Spirit Room, 6.30 for 7pm 

Chair:  Jennie.

WRITING TASK: 

FLASHBACK!! Begin by describing your final scene - then flashback to write the story of what led to this ending.