Keep writing

So this month’s interesting activity has been setting up a Literary Society in the small market town where I live.

It started so casually. An email from a local pub suggested they were interested in hosting a cultural event during one of their quiet times and would I like to meet to discuss it. 

I wasn’t sure why they picked me but it turned that it was  because I run our local Stanza group and my name came up in conversation with another poet. 

It has always seemed a pity that a town like mine, an affluent town with a significant proportion of well educated people, didn’t have a Literary Society. The town has a thriving history society, U3A and National Trust Association, all of which are popular. There used to be an Arts Society but it closed when nobody could be found to take on committee roles and the long serving committee felt that their eightieth birthday was the time to retire.

So if there was a gap in the market, an interest that I was sure people some would want to fill, this had to be a good idea.

After that it was easy. An email to a friend who runs the local news site, who posted the information on Facebook and Instagram and within a week forty interested people had got in touch. This was both rewarding and daunting. I had thought perhaps seven or eight people would be interested and we could meet in the snug in the pub but thirty will fill the bar and forty will probably be overcrowded.

Now it’s all about organisation, making a list of the names and email addresses of the people who are interested, sending out a questionnaire to find what areas of literature they’re interested in and arranging a first meeting. That’s due for Monday. We have an agenda of sorts. 

The difficulty with setting up a society is to do with ownership. It’s very easy for the people who start the society to feel they have a proprietorial interest, that it is their society and has to be run their way. I don’t want to do it like that. I want this to be a community society, so that it reflects the interests and wishes of the members. This is partly self-interest. I don’t want to be running the society for the next ten years. I want to be able to hand it over to  a new committee so that I can retire gracefully

The initial survey showed that people were interested in novels,  both classic and modern. Poetry came second, biography third and there was little interest in drama either classical modern or the possibility of theatre visits

I don’t know what to expect on Monday. I’m not sure how many are coming. I don’t know most of them, so I have no way of knowing how they will react to me or my proposals. I suppose that doesn’t matter.  If there are enough people interested in literature in town and they find a way of getting together and organising themselves, then that’s my first job done.