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Ayr Writers' Club
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Sunday, 18 August 2013
Rab Wilson at Burns Monument Centre
I now have a new word for my rejections (thanks Janice!) – my
back catalogue! So when Ross, the organiser of Rab Wilson’s workshop on Feasts, Festivals, Parades and Pageants
phoned to ask if I could submit something on that theme, I had a rummage
through my –ahem – back catalogue and found a piece I’d written about when my
granny used to take us to Govan to watch the Govan Fair from the windows of her
friend’s room and kitchen.
I wasn’t too sure what Rab intended doing with it but we all
duly turned up at the appointed hour, five out of the ten participants being from
the club. Rab pointed out that many poets had written about festivals including
Burns and one, John Ramsay, who’d written The
Sports of Fasten's-E'en, a long poem about a long forgotten festival held
in Kilmarnock. It had some scurrilous comments about the inhabitants of the
small towns round about and by the descriptions of the behaviour of local folk,
it’s no surprise it was dropped from the calendar of events.
Then to my effort. Rab read bits of it out and showed a clip
of an old film of the Govan Fair in the 1950’s. There was the procession
heading up Langlands Road and folk watching from the pavements and the windows,
and if only the camera had panned up the street a wee bit, there would have
been my brother and I hingin oot the windae tae!
After tea and cakes (though two poor souls went on an
enforced diet, seeing as how 10 cakes into 12 doesn’t go) and some warm up
exercises, we got down to some writing based on the piece of film which we’d
viewed several times over. We only had time to hear a few of our efforts but
excellent they were, and with a bit of lick and polish some will most
definitely be successes for their writers.
An excellent afternoon which got us all writing and all for a
fiver (including the tea and cakes. Sorry Pat!)
Tuesday, 6 August 2013
Summer Meeting - 31st July, 2013
There is a definite gastronomic theme to
the previous blog reports, so I thought I’d better keep up the tradition.
Yesterday evening’s bill of fare
contained a variety of dishes to suit every mood and palate. First on the table
– that would be the ‘table de temps’ by the way (click, clickety, click), was a
poetic appetizer in the form of a ‘triolet’, a poetic form unknown to me, but definitely one to have a
go at. We then had a darkly mixed dish with a hint of bitterness that at last
faded away entirely. From the children’s menu we had a dollop of evil Aunt
Aurora. We had international fare with the intense flavour of social injustice
from Devil’s Island and an ‘amuse bouche’ from Mongolia to whet our appetite
for a delicacy to come in a few months time. We had a small but subtly
flavoured poem, a nostalgic taste of Govan Fare (sorry FAIR!) and to finish, a
distinctly Scottish tang with Wayne the wolf and those pesky, wee pigs.
It might have been raining outside but the
warmth of Uuganaa’s hospitality, the excellent contributions and great company
brightened up a soggy evening.
The next read-around - the last before the
new session of Ayr Writers’ Club, will be on 21st August. The venue
is still to be decided.
Maggie Bolton
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Summer Meeting 17th July, 2013
RECIPE FOR A LITERARY COCKTAIL
Ingredients
• 1 dram of drama, with ‘legal’ spices
• 2 slices of social history, marinated for hundreds of years
• 1 dash of crime novel, with a salty taste
• 1 splash of flash fiction, with a twist in the tale
• 3 portions of short story, flavoured with poignancy, humour and nostalgia
• 1 shot of terror with the treat of the guillotine
• 1 sprig of children’s verse, sprinkled with rhyme and rhythm
• 3 dollops of poetry, fearful and funny
Method
Bring all ingredients together in a comfortable, well ventilated room.
Allow each ingredient time to breathe and infuse with appreciation and advice.
Add generous amounts of fluid when temperature rises.
Pause for short break to allow ingredients to settle.
Continue mixing and lace with laughter for almost 3 hours.
Finally, add ONE cherry!
WARNING –
The effects of this cocktail may take some time to wear off.
Thanks to Pat Young for her perfect hosting and all ‘ingredient’ contributors!
Carolyn O’Hara
18th July 2013
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Summer Meeting - 3rd July, 2013
This morning I woke up laughing; I’d been dreaming about
Maggie’s false teeth. Intrigued? No more than we were. Last night’s readaround
was a feast of literary fayre, with almost all the party of thirteen bringing
something tasty to the table.
The first
challenge, of course, was making our way to the venue, a significant quest even
for the most seasoned of orienteerers. Yet it is a fitting testimony to our
collective determination, that there was barely room enough, in Maggie’s
generous conservatory, to seat us all.
As each in turn
served up their piece, we laughed, grimaced and sighed in unison. From a
humorous recitation, complete with alarmingly accurate sound effects, through
several enticing opening pages of crime novels, articles giving vent to the
some of life’s frustrations (squirrels, left-handedness and the unwanted
attentions of the Chinese tourist paparazzi) and short stories speaking of love
and, oh yes, false teeth.
In the comfort and
conviviality of our hideaway, we welcomed each dish, allowing the flavours to
settle before adding our unique spice to the mix.
When darkness
surprised us, we realised it surely was time to retrace our steps; hopeful
caravans were hastily agreed as one by one cars turned and twisted their way
back to the main thoroughfare and peace returned to that particular corner of
Kilmaurs. Each head, no doubt, full of
promises to self, to finish that story, add a bit here, remove a word there,
something to sleep on and perhaps to dream about.
Speaking of which, what about
Maggie’s false teeth? Well they weren’t
Maggie’s exactly, but it makes a good headline, doesn’t it?
Dorothy Gallagher
Monday, 24 June 2013
Summer Meeting 19th June, 2013
Ayr Writers
Club Summer Tour
Summer just
wouldn’t be summer without a visit to the ice cream parlour, where the range of
flavours has everyone wide-eyed and salivating.
So, last
week, Ayr Writers had their own taste test of summer delights. Ann Burnett welcomed 12 club members to her
house where we enjoyed sharing a whole range of writing pieces, generating
plenty of discussion and laughter.
From
delicious, darkly disturbing short stories to vanilla chick lit; from minty
fresh sci-fi to evocative, home-made memoirs and tutti-frutti poetry, we
savoured them all. Some of us sank our
teeth into a tasty book review; others enjoyed an Oriental-flavoured excerpt
and a short story with hints of passion fruit. And we still had space to sample
plenty of scrumptious writing for children.
Thank you to
all contributors and especially to Ann for your hospitality on a wonderful
summer evening.
(Note to
self: You shouldn’t write a blog when you are feeling hungry.)
Rhona
Anderson
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Treasures Workshop - 15th June, 2013
We arrived one-by-one at the designated time, huddling together for warmth while we waited for the last stragglers to arrive* and listening to the rain as it pelted hard on the wide stone shoulders of the bard, who stood guard outside. When it was time, we began.
...It was quite a good laugh, actually.
Ayr Writer’s Club was well represented at writer-director Ewan Morrison’s Treasures writing workshop on Saturday, numbering five of the eight in attendance, including Ewan and the facilitator, writer Ross McGregor. Also in attendance were Teddy and Fluff Monkey - venerable old friends of Linda and Babs’ respectively, a representative from the Mesozoic Era (who sat in stony silence throughout) and various other much-treasured objects.
Ewan, author of several highly acclaimed books, including Menage, Swung, Distance and Close your Eyes encouraged us to briefly introduce ourselves and our treasures before giving us a breakdown of the key elements that he suggested should be worked into our stories; the what, where, when and why, and how they might particularly apply to writing about our objects.
From this section of the workshop the keys points were: that however precious our object is to us, its owner, our task as a writer is to find a way to make our story resonate with readers by finding a common theme; to remember to describe our treasure, physically, emotionally – to make it real for readers who haven’t fallen asleep with Fluff Monkey cuddled up close, or spent hours searching nose-pressed-to-the-sand for an elusive cowrie on a wind-swept northern beach; and thirdly to be true to the memory of what our treasure meant to us – when we first realised it was an important piece of our jigsaw – and not ‘learnt’ details filled in after the event. My own ‘cowrie’ for example, should remain a pretty little seashell, the cause of sibling rivalry, and not transform a la Wikipedia into a ‘marine mollusc (genus Cypraea, family Cypraeidae) with a glossy, domed shell and a long narrow opening’.
Ewan proceeded to quiz us one-by-one about our treasures, skilfully drawing a story from each of us by asking questions around our object, about families, memories and emotions, then zoning in on what really made each of our treasures significant and trying to identify a ‘conflict’ for us to use as the basis of our tales. Suddenly our seemingly mundane objects became the means to bare our souls, launch of into wild flights of futuristic fantasy, or examine the ever shifting society around us; the possibilities were endless!
All in all it was an enjoyable workshop and I think we each left feeling inspired to find the story hidden somewhere within our treasure.
*Janice
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