Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Harry, Ian, Jonathan, Kaz, Magda, Michele, Pip, Suzanne.
Apologies: Adele, Gill, Jenny, John, Laura, Lesley.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Ian explained why he was circulating his copies of The Author, the house magazine of the Society of Authors, and briefly touched on the workings of the closely associated Authors Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), which collects and distributes fees and revenues on behalf of its members.
Harry described how the ALCS worked for him.
Members’ Readings
Suzanne —
handed out copies and read a thought-provoking piece: Joan: A Mother’s Story.
Joan’s son Paul is a cherished child, proof to her that God is on her side, but she notices he has an over-close relationship with his best friend Colin. When he comes of age and goes to Drama School he reveals to his mother that he is gay. Joan finds this hard to accept and her Christian pastor makes it even harder. Her husband Tom sides with Paul and counsels forebearance. Joan and Tom grow apart over her treatment of their son, and Joan feels that even God is no longer on her side.
Then in 1984 the AIDS epidemic bursts on Britain and Paul is an early victim. The story describes how she comes to terms with her grief and becomes able to recognise love through her religious prejudice.
Ian mentioned that the mother of neurologist Oliver Sacks took a far harder line than “Joan”, totally rejecting her own gay son as an abomination to the Lord. But then he rambled off, relating Suzanne’s reportage with his own 1980s experience inside Catholic Action of the AIDS epidemic.
It’s worth putting on record that Ian was departing from WWG’s policy of critiquing members’ readings on political or religious topics in terms of their quality and effectiveness as pieces of writing, not as topics to kick off a frank discussion of other members’ own experiences and views. WWG is not AA nor a bible studies group. (In practice this guideline is used by the chairman only to guillotine discussions getting out-of-hand, not to discourage passionate engagement with a powerful poem or story.)
Harry —
continued reading his 1960s seafaring memoir Sea Wife, handing out copies.
The ship has reached the Bay of Bengal. The influence of Indian cuisine on Europeans in the form of curry is considered, as is the career of Ashoka, the patron of Buddhism in India and the Far East.
The draft contains an inline poem, Buddhist inspired, contemplating the poor graves of family members and the symbolic fate of tuppence given to the poet by his mother for Sunday School (from which he played truant).
Harry asked the meeting about the place of poetry in a prose memoir. Inline, as he has presented it (c/f The Lord of the Rings)? Or relegated to an appendix (c/f The Titan Kiss, or Doctor Zhivago)? The feeling of the meeting was that, with many poems, an appendix is best, but for a single poem it’s what the author fancies.
Magda —
read the first draft of a memoir of setting out on a long journey of recollection with her 80 year-old father, Bill, to his birthplace in southern India.
This was the first time Magda had attempted a prose piece for others to hear, but the meeting was unanimous in its enthusiasm for her project and showered her with advice. Ian felt the need to make two points: (a) far from being bored he had been gripped by the piece, and (b) (for a first draft) Magda had done nothing wrong. The proffered advice should be taken as engagement rather than disparagement, and that some of it (like Harry’s appealing to the sense of smell) can be added like salt and pepper at any stage. The essential thing was to get it all down on paper.
Michele —
read an extract from her novel in-progress, The Undesirables, about the Boer War and its aftermath.
It is now post-war. Returning from her burnt farm to take up her post as a nurse at the new hospital at Camp Irene (a concentration camp set up by the British as part of their scorched-earth policy against the Boer “rebels”), Anna moves into her room, which she shares with Isabella, and their reunion is one of delight. Her new uniform gives her a sense of pride and purpose. On the ward she meets (Doctor) Finn once more, and they surreptitiously feel for each others’ hands.
Jonathan —
read a poem of topical concern of such power that he was asked to read it again.
The meeting closed at 1:00 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 