So it's a bit like what goes on here at times...?

Doug
On 2012-02-08, at 7:45 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:

> Well, hang on, #63 goes as far as Brockley. That's on the way by several
> miles.
> 
> Formats vary but stay the same.
> 
> We gather downstairs in the pub and sometimes hang on there till after 4
> if we know or think we know someone is coming.
> 
> But generally we go upstairs around 4 and sit around, sometimes inheriting
> a furniture configuration, sometimes moving it a bit, sometimes coping
> because there's an odd but deliberate layout for a later event.
> 
> I usually say something ex cathedra, ex convenor, though I may not be the
> first to speak; it's rather informal.
> 
> There are not many of us for various reasons; but that's not the main point.
> 
> I have noticed that I tend to say _who would be first?_ which may be
> indicative of pedantry. (Later I say _who would be next?_... I may stop
> now I have vocalised it. I always forget until I have done it again weeks
> later.)
> 
> Someone reads. Someone else reads. We time out or run out of work.
> 
> Over the last 18 months or so, talking about the work has increased
> greatly. The implicit injunction has always been not to make destructive
> criticism (e.g. I don't call that poetry, that's not a sonnet, being
> widespread obviuous examples of what we are trying to avoid.)
> 
> Clearly, from bits and pieces archived that I have read, that was
> happening in the early days in the 50s and a bit later. In those days
> typed texts sent in advance were the order of business. By the time I
> started going in the early 70s, work was received without comment or
> enthusiasm. This was Cobbing. I am not sure how many would have had the
> imagination to steer it in another direction without any aesthetic /
> ideological undertow. If he really couldn't cope, he tended to say
> nothing; mostly he said _very good_ but without much emphasis on either
> word. I'd like to think that I would be where I am now, but it seems
> unlikely. Many / most groups I have seen or attended or read to seem to
> have an agenda.
> 
> Now and then people can't take it and don't come back because the
> aesthetic preference of the group is clear even if indefinable. But it is
> broad and it is wider than the insipid _linguistically innovative poetry_
> which I have tried to love as a definition and cannot.
> 
> We work on the inherited assumption that if there is anything to what *one
> does then others will respond. You can and always could comment, but you
> did it by saying _it might be even better if..._ or some such
> 
> I think that is good pedagogy
> 
> Just now I would say that everyone of the regulars is surprising us every
> time, and with a delight, and a different one every time, so that all you
> want to do is praise first. Then maybe comment.
> 
> Publications can show other directions though wf is not publishing so much
> nowadays as it once did. The occasional invitation can be directional but
> in a good way. It may be that everyone knows the invitee. If not,
> implicitly I am saying _listen to this_
> 
> That's about it. People are welcome to attend without reading and some
> come wanting to be judged, feeling it seems that they have missed out
> unless a magister says _correct the following errors_

Douglas Barbour
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