Feedback Forum

The Writers' Soc met today in college, for the first time in way too long. We had to put our Feedback Forums on hold last semester, with most of us - if not all of us - actively involved in what became a triple-header showcase of plays at Christmas. It didn't make sense to try squeeze one more thing into an already busy schedule, not when it required producing work, and not when it usually goes on for about two hours.

It was so good to get to hear a lot of new work from people, with a mix of poetry, short stories, blog posts and letters, written in various emotional and sobreital states.

The Feedback Forum is a good chance for us to get to share our work, but that's not its only purpose. The poems we share - because it's usually poems, but that's not intentional - tell us something of the people who wrote them, and that leads on to various conversations about the meanings behind the work. We ended up talking in length about abortion in Ireland as a result of someone's work. Her first time coming, and that's what happens.

It was awesome.

I shared a single poem, this time, written at the start of the year for a friend whom almost everyone in the society knows. It was a very personal piece, and one I haven't had the chance to share more broadly, yet. All in all, I think it went down well.

The Writers' Soc is due to go on to become part of the first ever English Week in my college. Several societies - Drama, Writers, Tea and Sci-Fi confirmed, from what I know about it - are planning events to fit into the week, to make it known that there are lots of fun ways to share the joy of the English language and its various media. Thankfully I'm not in charge of running the entire thing, or I'd be freaking out right now.

It will be fun, though. We've never had so much to do in the various societies. Drama lasted the longest out of the non-sports socieities last year, with two plays in the second semester drawing in massive crowds - almost selling out twice! That's a lot for a small college. This year, we split up the work a lot over the two semesters, and created something entirely different out of the Drama Society than has been seen in previous years. Just as well; the number of new members jumped up this year, making it the biggest Drama Society I've seen since my first year in the college (possibly the biggest it's been since before that!)

With English Week, Drama is going along with three much younger societies to create something unique to the college. There's such a wide variety of events in the works, and I'm delighted that the Writers' Soc, my baby in the college, gets to be involved in it. We're still planning something massive, but it all focuses on the type of work we do in the Feedback Forum. We're going to get a little bit more public than people are used to seeing us, if they even remember we exist.

I canny wait.

In the meantime, I'm going to take advantage of the poetry-buzz I'm on and work on some new material over the coming week to get as many thoughts as I can out on paper in as best a form as I can manage. The next Feedback Forum is going to rock!