Writers Mill Minutes April 28^th 2019

Nearly 20 people, including several new members, were present on Sunday to enjoy Carolyn Martin’s inspirational poetry session . Much poetry was written by all. Much inspiration was shared. And some fascinating and amusing discussions ensued. Rohan’s Indian snacks were a great addition to the meeting too. Thank you!

The meeting began with “meeting stuff.” Sheila raised the question of annual anthologies and asked for a show of hands about this year’s potential effort. With so few people voting, the question should probably be opened to the rest of the members so… please email ADMIN with your answers:

1. Do you want us to produce an anthology this year (YES or NO)
2. For any anthology, we would invite new submissions as well as contest entries. That said, would you prefer:
   1. A multi-topic anthology, perhaps based on several recent contest topics
   2. A single-topic anthology like Fine Lines, perhaps based on a single contest topic
   3. A sort-of-single-topic anthology, with a loosely interpreted title, so that new writing and entries from many recent contests could be submitted.
3. Would you prefer print copies to be handed out in NOVEMBER or DECEMBER. November means we need to get our skates on. December gives us longer and allows us (potentially) to upload the anthology during November’s meeting.

Next, since we’d already mentioned contests, came contest prizes which went to

1. Karin – Vision in Red
2. Zita – Six Nuns
3. Judy – Circle of Life

Candy was awarded to anyone who could guess which entry went with which prize, and who wrote which entry, and anyone else who looked sufficiently hungry! Don’t forget to enter our next contest, and whether or not you enter, don’t forget to read, comment and vote.

Our next contest closes next SUNDAY, so please get your childhood memories (or your characters’, or your kids’, or those memories still being made or forgotten or whatever) into words on your computer and send them to CONTEST  before the end of Sunday. Other upcoming contests end on the first Sunday of June—Distraction in Blue or whatever color distracts you—and the first Sunday of July—a disastrous vacation.

Finally, next month’s meeting, on the 3^rd Sunday of May (otherwise known as May 19^th) will be a new experience where we invite you to BRING YOUR OWN sentence / paragraph / story / line of poetry problems. If you’re bringing something, please have, say, 6 copies printed out for people to share and read. Norm will bring two paragraphs that have been annoying him over multiple rewrites and we’ll start with these, then see how far we get. We hope to provide lots of new eyes and ears for those pieces that just won’t quite fall into place. You’ll be welcome to read aloud, ask for another reader, tell us what you’re aiming for and why it’s annoying you so much, or just take part. And the aim is to be supportive, useful and fun.

The meeting was handed over to Carolyn Martin at this point, and she should need no introduction; but for anyone who’s not been to one of Carolyn’s Writers’ Mill workshops before, she’s  a Portland poet with an absolutely beautiful website (just follow the link in her name), and some equally beautiful books of poetry, including a Penchant for Masquerades, which has only just come out. Carolyn told us we hold a special place in her heart because she hadn’t taught for a while when we first invited her. Now on her fourth visit to us, she continues to hold a place in our hearts too.

The big question, for writing fiction, poetry, essay or whatever, is where we might get our inspiration from. Carolyn’s suggestions include:

1. Trying out a different voice – perhaps that of a fairytale character or a stranger in the newspaper
2. Travel – new people and places can always inspire, but take notes or you’ll forget what you saw/heard
3. Relationships – especially things said in a relationship.
4. Or search for inspiration: an Aeolian harp has strings which wait for the breeze to play them. While we’re waiting:
   1. Write down ideas or we’ll lose them before we have time to use them
   2. Be a detective of life
   3. Google something: the history of nursery rhymes, quotations, Bible stories…
   4. Play with words – e.g. by signing up for com and word of the day.

Our wordplay began with a list of intriguing (and simple) quotations and an invitation to change where we were sitting. Members were paired by number, an intriguing technique for creating not just new poems but also new friendships! But instead of finishing each other’s sentences, we were asked to choose a quotation together then, in turn, provide lines or phrases or sentences that just might lead to a poem. This was the inspiration phase. Ten lines later (five each) we separated and sculpted what we had, chipping away the unwanted words, adding new ideas, following new branches and creating, each, our own poems. It was interesting to see:

1. How two people bouncing the same ideas off each other could go in such different directions
2. How two people could be so surprisingly in tune with each other’s ideas
3. How two people could inspire each other to such great creativity.

After wonderful snacks and time to circulate and chat, Carolyn led us in a completely different exercise where we were given a list of rather strange dictionary words and definitions and invited to… be inspired by them, use them, do something with whichever of them spoke to us. Jim wrote a truly amazing piece using nearly all the words. David commented on the fact that he and Jim are both left-handed and caused much amusement with his left-handed writing piece. Story seeds, story scenes, poetry and further essays ensued, all truly fascinating and unexpected. Which perhaps is part of the heart of creativity – expect the UNEXPECTED.

If you missed this session, and even if you didn’t, you might want to mark your calendars for October 20th when Carolyn will return to enthuse and inspire us again. Thank you so much for this session, Carolyn!