WOKING WRITERS CIRCLE MEETING ON ZOOM June 2020

Attending: Amanda, Greg, Alan, Peter, Alex (new), Carla, Tricia, Heather, Danny, Liz, Simon, Mel.

 

News

Liz said the next book group meeting would be on Tuesday 23 June. Members were reading different books, including The Plague by Albert Camus.

Carla announced the publication of her debut pamphlet collection, Negotiating Caponata, and its Zoom launch on Thursday 16 July. This means that the next Woking Writers Circle meeting will be on Thursday 23 July, a week later than normal.

Peter reported that an article that he had altered since reading it at the last WWC meeting is to be published in a forthcoming issue of Vintage Motorcycle Journal. He has been commissioned to write another, too.

 

Readings

Peter read us another section of his wartime story about ice-skater Tommy. It is August 1939, and evacuees have already started arriving, disturbing the bucolic summer mood in the countryside. It was a passage packed with authentic details, and a message of ‘Half a mo, HItler – let us have our holidays first.’

Heather’s thoughtful and crafted poem, ‘The Swarm’, was about the mixed feelings of someone experiencing an invasion of bees in a garden. They move on without harming harm her. It ends: “I gather pegs, shake out the crumpled sheets, / absurdly hurt that they rejected me.”

Liz read out her article explaining the subtle intricacies of the haiku, which has subsequently been published on the letters page of the Woking News & Mail, along with another of her photos and haiku.

Carla read her blog about summer holidays during the pandemic. It includes references to meetings on Zoom, and peeping in people’s houses, and checking out background pictures and bookshelves. She had had to cancel a trip to Canada, and missed theatre outings, and felt online gatherings ‘don’t give you a flavour of the real thing’.

Simon introduced his lockdown pastiche of Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday – ‘We’re not going on a summer holiday ..’ –  with the words: ‘Why did you go into education?’ ‘July and August’. He apologised to Cliff and the Shadows, but we all enjoyed it.

Alan’s excellent lockdown story ‘Contagion’ centred on a couple in isolation, with ensuing tension, and references to untrimmed hair. A businessman’s deserted premises are being taken over by nature. It had an abrupt ending.

Tricia read another extract from her dystopian exploration of the pandemic, ‘The Deadly Crown’. Amid a chaotic, destabilising atmosphere, this passage looked at the easing of lockdown, and back at positive aspects of confinement, and prompted a brief and lively discussion.

Greg read a poem called ‘Solent’, about a family holiday 30 years ago. The recent poem, with a Father’s Day theme, had been triggered by an old photograph of himself and his daughter on a ferry returning from the Isle of Wight.

Mel introduced her poem, ‘The Short Fuse’, by saying that “one of the things that really upsets me is prejudice”. Her powerful poem was based on a dream, she said.

Danny read his entertaining story, ‘The Visible Man’, which involved a police interrogation, and included colourful details of a street market.

 

Next meeting, on Zoom:  Thursday 23 July.