San Miguel Writers

The Writers met this Friday morning and our next meeting is on Friday 26th January 2018, and staying with the usual last Friday of the month

John Mac brought two poems. The first entitled, Cheers, of four verses in length, pay tribute to ‘the Blanca Expats’ ‘who sing/the ballads of too long ago’. The fourth stanza ends with these two lines ‘they’re having the time of their lives/and living their time once again’.

The second one started off with the title of False Memories’ and was changed, with discussion, to Reflection. John presented this one with central alignment and it worked very well with the varying line length. There was a distinct rhyming scheme that he does not normally use. The second verse ‘mirrored’ the first. The lines went ‘fickle hearted memory/you stole my dream away’ was the final two lines of the first verse and ‘fickle hearted memory/delivers one more sting’ in the second and final verse. Both poems need to be read in full to do John’s writing justice.

For several of us, John’s lines, ‘touched a chord’ in our memories and we easily could relate to his words.

In a later conversation Margaret said that as she written a number of ‘love poems’ and intends to publish a pamphlet. John Mac said that he would look out for his poems on that same theme. This we can discuss next time.

Margaret produced two pages from an intended novel and asked for us to comment. It could have been an opening chapter and whatever it was intended to do to a reader - we were asked. It grabbed out attention, and contained enough information for us to want to know more. We all liked it.

Darlene had previously sent us Chapter Nine of Amanda and we scrutinized this line by line. We discussed, suggested and ideas were absorbed, but as we all know the author has the final say.
This was another enjoyable exercise for us. We will be reading more.

John E had circulated two pages of his memoir and this was scrutinized in the same way as previously referred to for Darlene’s chapter on Amanda. It is only recently that anyone else had seen any of his memoir, but, as always, another persons eyes proved to be valuable and constructive.

His next pages will include an insertion of two poems that will sit very well with his travels after leaving London.

He also updated the group on his poetry collection. He has written some Haiku to introduce each section, but this is definitely work-in-progress. For each of his poems to be included he has written ‘an index’ that contained relevance to the source of each individual poem. There was a forceful discussion on the merits of including this in an index or whether suitable lines could be included on the same page as the poem. He has written a total of four pages and these will be examined in the next meeting. No doubt the value any of this will be discussed.

He also mentioned the theme of LONELY. This is a topic in the news, not just because of the time of year, but because of the murder of Jo Cox and her ‘Commission for Loneliness’ and discussions that she was involved with about the problem of loneliness which is now involving Rachel Reeve. It is suggested that there should not only be a commission on loneliness, but also that a government minister should be appointed.

There are many lyrics out there that mention this word. It is all there to be researched and written. We will see what he can produce. One that easily springs to mind is Rick Parfitt’s new album to be released on January 7th.

It is all there for the imagination to take it on. We had a terrific meeting and everyone helps to do what I want and like to do. That is to write.
JE 15.12 2017