Sunday 25 September 2011

At Home with some Poets


   There will have been two note-worthy events this week: the poetry group meeting, and tonight there is an Aunt Sally.  Obviously, without developing unforetold psychic abilities, I am going to have to wait until tomorrow to write about the Aunt Sally.  I'm just trying to whet your appetite...

I was a tad annoyed about the poetry evening, truth be told.  It had been planned for Tuesday evening, and then on Monday, I got a phone call from Jennifer, one of the group, telling me that because there was some meeting to discuss to funding for volunteer groups on the Tuesday, they had decided to move the meeting to Thursday.  As it happened, I wasn't busy on Thursday evening, although it meant I would have to suggest the OH find somewhere else to be for the evening (he had been going to a football match on the Tuesday, so that wasn't a problem) but I was rather put out by the suggestion that I as host could switch evenings at the drop of a hat.  I hummed and haahed a bit on the phone.

"That's not a problem, is it?" Jennifer said, rather sharply, I thought, a bit like the hockey teacher at school who still frequents my nightmares.

"Umm, I suppose not."

"Well, are you busy that evening?"  It was said quite aggressively, the suggestion being, obviously, that I couldn't possibly be busy,.

"No, that's fine."  I swallowed back the rest of the retort that was springing into my mind, along the lines of presumptuous arty types and changed the calendar to reflect the new date.

And yet, when the seven of them arrived on Thursday evening, there was no mention of the changed date, no thanks to me for agreeing at such short notice to change the date, and in addition they didn't even mention the funding meeting.  Perhaps I'm expecting too much of them.  However, the poetry was again of mixed type and quality and I don't feel able to share my offering with you, roundly patronised as it was.  Jennifer is the founder of the group since she once had a poem published in a magazine, though I think it was back in the last century, and after she has commented, most of the rest of the group follow her lead.  My poem was 'lovely' and had 'a good sense of rhyme' but not much more, until the end, when a young man called David, who's only in the group temporarily while he's home from university, offered to help clear up the mugs and nibbles and told me in the kitchen that he thought my ideas were good but that I needed to work on the structure of my poem.  Which was a much more useful comment.  Our next meeting is at Jennifer's, as it happens, and I'm toying with the idea of trying to organise a really important event at the last minute that will necessitate another change of evening, but I know that's childish.  Our theme, since our meeting will be in October, is Light and Dark - fireworks and all that sort of thing - and the suggestion is that we select one of the poems to be sent to the village newsletter for publication.  I don't know how that will go down with Annie, but there have been a few poems published in recent months, usually by children, so perhaps she'll go for an adult one.

And speaking of Annie, I have barely seen her this week.  I did see her out in the village once, but she had her children with her, so whether she really didn't see me wave or was pointedly ignoring me, I don't know.   Perhaps she'll calm down after a while, especially once she remembers it was Verity who was rude to her rather than me.

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