January Meeting

Hello fellow scribes,

It was a heroic coterie of women who risked life and frozen limbs through Nottingham’s early wintered streets and tucked themselves snugly into Minxy’s plush apartment this month. After making sure that everyone was seated and sated with tea in teasing mugs (you should have seen them), and a barrel of baked biscuits, we proceeded to attempt to complete the now yearly task of producing relevant writings for February’s Notttingham Rainbow Heritage exhibition.

The suggesting themes were as follows...

1. Gay icons – inspired by the London exhibition, who were your icons?
2. That’s so Gay! – any piece of writing inspired by this popular denigration
3. Write about something that has happened to you, relating to your sexuality, that you would either love or hate to see happening in the future
4.Imagine yourself at age 80, looking back at the differences, good or bad, that your future world has with the current year 2010.

The following was my 15mn freewrite... there were many other inspired pieces, and it would be great to see more added to this blog, so please post yours here soon :-)
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I stared out of my window as I do every morning nowadays. I love to watch the birds swinging from the feeders. They’re so rare these days that I sometimes wait half an hour before glimpsing a single one. Once upon a time I’d find whole families of blue tits and sparrows fighting over a ball of fat. These days a bag of food lasts all winter. Anyway, there I was, dreamily soaking up the dazzling winter’s sunny snow rays, when a couple came gliding out of the church opposite, swallowed up soon into the fold of family and friends. People were throwing confetti and capturing the event on the life recorder. Their virtual relations, beamed in from abroad, were observing from their Holoslates, foot-square sheets that emanate a reconstituting light from their position on the ground.

My thoughts were propelled back to fifty years earlier, when marriage was legal for friends of mine. It had taken fifteen years of couples using the commitment ceremonies successfully, year after year, before the government agreed to allow commitments to become marriages, and there’d been much questioning about whether this was the right thing to allow, or whether any single-sex couples even wanted marriage anymore. Then, all of a sudden it was allowed, and there were a few years of celebration before it really sank in that this was now an accepted process for all to be able to demonstrate their love, no holds barred.

All was well until the food started running out during the big freeze, and people were looking for scapegoats.
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See you all next month... and don't forget, come to visit us at the exibition in February at the Broadway cinema.

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tonights meeting

Tonight we wrote on the theme of ‘favourites’ - music, colours or food. After a bit of a slow start where I tried (and failed) to find adequate words in praise of Hallelujah, as orgasmic as mashed potato or as lush as any shade of green, I tuned into the following words which I'm sharing with you exactly as written (scary!!). Karen x (Monday 12th Octobr 2009)


there are some things you want to feel, touch, say, do, hear, smell
and there are others that do all those things to you;
whether you want them to or not
things you feel were there at the beginning
things you hope will be there at the end
things that make you weep when you want to rage,
things that make you rage when you want to fall
that trip you up when you want to fly
and that shoot an arrow through your heart
when you soar beyond
letting the pain slip out of your breast
and float you down to earth
a feather at a time.
the lightest thing, the hardest thing, the wildest thing.
the heart aching yes,
the gut wrenching please
the take me with you when you go
and the no, the no, the no.
the wrapping round like a pashmina
the heaving up like coal sacks
the dragging back like trunks of forgotten pleasure
the sinking down, like dead weight to nowhere, returns to earth



Thank you Renee for tonights ideas and Jimmy Cliff for the associated feelings.

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Monday 14: Next Meeting of Sapphist Writers

Don't forget to come to the Sapphist Writer's meeting this coming Monday, the 14th, at 7:15pm! We'll meet at the Nottingham Women's Centre (30 Chaucer Street) as usual. See you there!

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