The Carlisle Christian Writers meetings are fun and we hope beneficial to our writing.
Our speaker this time was one of our members, who spoke on the ‘mechanics of poetry’ and introduced us to different styles of poetry, where the metre, stress and rhythm vary. We all learnt a great deal and personally I realised how difficult poetry writing is.
Space, was the subject of our homework which we approached in different ways. One member played a CD by Thomas in Alium, centuries old yet relevant for today. We likened it to angels singing.
One member wrote of the teenagers plea ‘I just want my own space’, no doubt a long suffering parent. Another observant person wrote of two dog walkers passing daily in the park and shouting ‘hello’ whenever they met and yet when they saw each other on the train, ignoring each other. The lack of space seemed to make a difference.
A prose poem was offered and ‘If I could rent a space’ and ‘What is space?’ were the titles of two other pieces of work. ‘There is space in a matchbox’ observed another. That needed thinking about.
Our exercise for the afternoon was to write a book review on one of the books of the Bible and the others guess which. – Job, Ruth, Esther, Habakkuk, Psalms, Jeremiah and others were tackled.
It’s a pity some of you don’t live nearer; you would have enjoyed the afternoon.
Carol, the co-ordinator