Erskine Writers

 The meeting opened with the club sending their best wishes to Sandra and Donnie who are both suffering at the moment - Sandra with a painful hip and Donnie hospitalised with a broken knee. We send them our very best wishes with hopes for a speedy recovery. Congratulations were given to Lorna who has been invited as the guest writer to a local Dumbarton primary school as it celebrates World Book Day. Eleven members attended the meeting - apologies being received from the aforementioned Donnie and Sandra and, also, Joan. As anticipated it was a busy meeting with the results of the first - the poetry competition being announced, along with the accompanying critiques. There were fourteen entries in all, the winner being Rob with Reverie , second was Sandra R with The Truth and third was Jeannie with Barefoot. Morag’s entry Sighisoara received a highly commended and Brian’s A window that may never close , Jackie’s Truth and Hilary’s A View on the world were commended. Irene read out her entry also entitled The Truth and Sandra R gave us her second entry entitled Actually. Absent members will have the opportunity to read out their entries at a future date and it was felt that a total of fourteen poems was a healthy return. Two points of note emerged from the meeting which are worthy of mention - at least four of the placed poems had their genesis in the actual workshop itself  and were cosmetically completed at home. Secondly, our guest, Jenny Lindsay, wrote over two thousand words in her critiques - an average of nearly a hundred and fifty words per poem, an indication of a very thorough adjudication with her general comment being that she could see that lots of time had been taken and that the entries were a joy to read. All entrants are to be congratulated on their efforts. The afternoon finished with Rob reading a piece on the Jacobite Rebellion, John M reading his short story An Explosion of Colour, a fantasy, spy thriller with psychological overtones - my description(!)  and the club was delighted when Marilyn gave us her maiden offering entitled Little Annie’s Legacy. Next week we are to hear of forgotten or neglected heroes and another interesting afternoon is anticipated.