Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Gill, Harry, Ian, Jenny, Laura, Magda, Michele.
Apologies: Jan, John, Jonathan, Kaz, Pip, Suzanne.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Ian called us to pause in respect for the victims of the disaster in Washington DC that morning, in which two aircraft collided over the Potomac River with the loss of all lives.
Adele reported a recent approach by Antony Bellekom, of Dogwood Theatre Productions, to repeat the sort of event we staged together on 23 May 2024.
Members’ Readings
Magda — read aloud 2 poems:
— a “silly poem” produced as a class exercise to write a poem about the month of January. She is stuck for what rhymes with “January” and prefers to dwell on the notion of doorways and beginnings. She next considers the god of the month: Janus, and is again stuck for a rhyme (a polite one),
— an elegy on the overgrown site of a burnt-down building. The poem starts with the word “Ago”, which everyone agreed was an eye-catching alternative to “formerly” or “once upon a time”.
Harry — continued reading his 1960s seafaring memoir, Sea Wife, handing out copies to read along.
It is August 1960. The Marwarri leaves Calcutta for America. Harry and Beryl catch a cold from their trip ashore and they conjecture who from. Perhaps from the corn wallah, who removes corns by biting them off?
Sailing out into the Hooghly River, the Marwarri passes over the future grave of the Martand, another company ship, whose demise is described in dreadful detail as mishap is piled upon mishap. In the ensuing discussion, Harry invited advice on how best to refer to a (back then) future event when writing in the Historical Present. It gradually came clear that nobody else knew either.
Gill — continued reading from her YA novel: Fabric of the Earth: Seven Witches and a Boy. She invited discussion of a draft synopsis for a book proposal to agents, then read a short passage in which the boy hero, Tommy Bradley, and his witchy companions, conspicuously averse to public transport, decide to travel across the ocean by water serpent. It just so happens to be at the time of their great spawning event, which occurs every 100 years. An egg hatches in Tommy’s hand, but the tiny serpent is snatched back by its mother.
Adele — read her real-life account of Martin, a movie photography enthusiast, who experienced not one but two near-death experiences following cardiac arrest while out walking with his son Ben. On release from hospital the brain-damaged Martin was unable to connect with his family, which soon broke up, forcing him to go and live with his parents.
During the cardiac episode, Martin’s camera had continued running, recording his admission to hospital. The resulting video played a crucial role in his eventual recovery, as did artwork therapy.
A discussion ensued on the meaning of “the Void” in which Martin asserts he was trapped. Ian mentioned Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroanatomist who suffered a massive stroke in her left hemisphere, which she describes in My Stroke Of Insight. There she refers to Martin’s “Void” as Nirvana – or (during her TED talk) as “La-la land”. (See a detailed discussion of Doctor Jill’s experience in the Minutes of 16 May 2019, with further weblinks.)
Michele — read a further instalment of her novel in-progress: The Undesirables, set in Southern Africa during the Boer War, 1898-1902.
Nils (Anna’s brother) is a POW on St Helena. The prisoners are treated with dignity and life is bearable in spite of the hard labour growing their own food. But trouble breaks out not only between captured commandos and “hands-uppers”, but between citizens of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The British see fit to establish two camps for the warring parties.
When Lord Kitchener and Jan Smuts conclude the Treaty of Vereeneging it is time to go home. Nils has been in contact with his father and plans to return to the ruined family farm.
The meeting closed at 1:15 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 