Saturday, 14 February 2015

Picture books and straitjackets

We met at Izzie's house
Izzie, Annie, Rob and I.
No Chris, because of work;
no Linda, because of illness.
(Get well soon, Linda.)

A small, writerly exchange of news:
Izzie's blog is 42 in the lifestyle blog charts;
Rob has launched his crowd-funding scheme;
Annie's organising a poetry recital competition;
Tony's just surviving.

The red velvet cake and white wine for some and then the
business of the evening:  the reading and critique of Annie's
submission to the group.  And the tension felt between the
need to have a narrative versus the pure
fun with words, and Rob doubting whether he was
qualified to judge poetry and yet finding the rhythm of the words
inconsistent. When it works well, he said, it really
works and Izzie liked the sweet imagery of the characters having their
bath with suds and foam but worried about two stories being
told at the same time and Tony wondered if the rhyming couplets were a
straitjacket and whether Annie might be better off
translating the whole thing into free
verse so she wouldn't have to worry about the
rhythm or the meter or where the
stress fell or how many syllables there were but could
concentrate on either moving the story forward or just
revelling in the sheer joy of the nonsense of it all.


Plan for future meetings (subject to change)

Tuesday 24 February
Izzie submitting
Tony hosting

Tuesday 10 March
Rob submitting and hosting

Tuesday 24 March
Linda or Chris submitting
Annie hosting

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