Ripon Writers' Group

Some changes to the Group’s constitution were approved, relating mainly to the committee structure.

After three years in the post, Sheila Whitfield stood down from the Chairmanship and was thanked for her services. Maggie Cobbett was elected as the new Chairman with Caroline Slator continuing as Treasurer and Peter Page as Secretary. Janet Barclay, Carol Mayer, Susan Perkins and Christine Summers complete the new committee. Peter Hicks will be President.

The committee will meet soon to begin drawing up a programme for 2020. Watch this space!

This has been quite a week for Carol and Kate (see posts below), culminating in the launches of their new collections.

A packed room very much enjoyed the readings from all three poets. Hazel Cameron isn’t a member of our group YET, but would be very welcome to join us!

RWG made a very good showing in this year’s Anthology with Lindsay Trenholme winning first prize for ‘Bottled Ocean’and seven other members – Carol Mayer, Christine Summers, Ian Gouge, Kate Swann, Maggie Cobbett, Susan Perkins and Sheila Whitfield – also having one or more of their poems included.

Also pictured are the indefatigable Andy Croft and Sarah Moor, who seem to have been omnipresent throughout the Festival. We’re very grateful to them and to their colleague Philip Trewhitt for all their hard work as well as to Simon from the Little Ripon Bookshop for manning the stall at many events.

Unfortunately Susan was unable to attend this event, so we’ll look forward to hearing her poems on a future occasion.

There was a good audience turnout for this event, with short talks on different wines and cheeses interspersed by poetry and song.

It was unfortunate that the original positioning of the festival banners was beyond the reach of the sole microphone, but they were moved part way through the evening to give a better background to performers.

Participants from RWG were Sheila Whitfield, Carol Mayer, Daphne Peters, Maggie Cobbett, Ian Gouge, Kate Swann and Christine Summers – who performed with her husband Dylan. An enterprising gentleman from their table was able to improvise a microphone stand for them! Audience member Lizzy Goddard also read one of her poems. The photographs below show the performers in the same order as above.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the adjudication of the Artistic Licence competition has been postponed to the meeting on Tuesday, 26th November.

The meeting on Tuesday, 1st October will now feature a series of writing challenges.

Sheila welcomed Paul Zealand and his wife Stella to the meeting and invited Paul to talk about storytelling in the oral rather than the written tradition. Paul began by saying that he had once been a hobby writer but had lost interest in the written word. His active interest in Morris Dancing had taken him to the Whitby Folk Festival where he had attended a storytelling workshop and things had taken off from there. He reminded his audience that as human language developed, humans would tell stories or things in story form as a way of passing on information and ideas. Storytelling is not reading aloud or reciting but finding a story and relating it.

Paul then went on to tell several stories, linking them with comments on the tradition, its contents and its techniques, including the ‘Rule of Three’ which says that mentioning something three times is more effective than any other number. He then invited questions from members.

After the refreshment break Paul invited members to develop a story by choosing objects at random from a bag. He concluded with another story.

Sheila thanked Paul for his talk and presented him with a token of the Group’s appreciation.

As a regular attender at Swanwick (Writers’ Summer School) since 2006, Maggie was delighted to have her five minute script ‘Bill’s Last Night’ chosen to be performed as a rehearsed reading at this year’s Page to Stage event. Her pleasure was intensified when it won the ‘Swanny’ for Best Drama. None of this would have been possible without fine acting from fellow Swanwickers Geoff Parkes and Andy Cain under the directorship of Neil Zoladkiewicz. Geoff also won the award for Best Performer in a Drama!

Now, thanks to the technical expertise of yet another Swanwick regular, Steve Barnett, it’s available to watch on YouTube. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6moGTOPGXo&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1ZbqEBOrQs6Ce_Kl8HszEr8mNq6K_-4IORL-vFpJRGbFfj8ohDL1RDI7I