New Year, New Stuff!
January’s been busy so far. Monday the fifth saw the first meeting of the Alvaiázere chapter of the Wordplay Writers Club, hosted by Jim and me (mainly Jim). A small but marvellous group of writers gathered in The Hub on a freezing cold night, but our ingenuity and creativity (and Maryna’s Uzbek tea) kept us warm. Every month we settle on a prompt to inspire us - and anyone who fancies turning up next time - to write a piece (500 words or less) for the following month’s meeting. This month’s prompt was ‘Lost in Translation.’ Next meeting will be on February the second, 6pm-8ish. I’d love to show you some pictures of the night, but like an oaf, I forgot to take any.
Me. Reading out in public. (pic by Dixon Bordiano)
On Saturday the tenth, I was in Caldas da Rainha, being the first guest host for the original and genuine Wordplay Writers Club at the Prontos. Impact Village. I ran a workshop centred round overcoming the terrifying prospect of reading your work out loud in public. I mean, it’s all very well, spending your time sweating over getting the words in the right order on the page - but what about when you have to present it to your friends and peers? Or to a crowd of strangers? It can be kind of nerve-wracking, and so I wanted to help my fellow writers feel a little more comfortable about standing on a stage and reading to an audience. We did exercises concentrating on rhythm, volume, pitch and timbre in breakout groups (there were fourteen of us), then returned to try out some vocal workouts and tongue-twisters. It was great fun, and there were some excellent recitations in the second half. The next meeting in Caldas is on the fouteenth of February and the prompt is ‘Soliloquy’. The very wonderful Dixon took some photos. a massive thank you to Jim and Jazz for giving me the opportunity to do this. I loved it.
Deep in thought. (pic by Dixon Bordiano)
The following day, I was due to run the same workshop at the Writer’s Club meeting in Tomar, but sadly the venue, a beautiful but busy café, wasn’t the right fit because of the hubbub of customer conversation - so Jim and Jazz took the helm for the whole shebang. The theme was syntax (the order of words in a sentence), and it was fascinating. The prompt for next month is ‘Shadows’. Thank you again, Jim and Jazz! The lovely Jazz took the picture below.
Me. Reading out loud in public. Again. (pic by Jazz)
And then on Saturday the seventeenth, I was very pleased to discover that three of my poems had been chosen by Paul Brookes for his Not Advent issue of The Starbeck Orion. Thank you very much for that, Paul.
There’s more to come…