Club Business

We actually had a "meta" moment tonight and talked about the club itself. It was agreed that increasing our membership is a worthwhile objective as this would bring a greater diversity of poetic voices into our circle, so we brainstormed ways this could be brought about. The following are the ideas brainstormed:

• Have events
• Make fliers (e.g. readings for the public)
• Write in the "Notes" section of people's directories
• Food
• Poster of a poem
• Booklets in apartments (including the poems we've put on the blog, perhaps)
• Valentine poem deliveries on request
• Fundraiser (since clubs have fundraisers): custom poem delivery or something
• Read a poem at ward prayer
• Shirts
• Altoids (actual Altoids mints at our meetings)
• Make the club a part of the culture

There was also a suggestion to do a sort of collaborative poetry, in which lines are written by two authors alternately.

Next week Jhon is going to bring a prompt in the form of a photograph, which we will all respond to. Maybe we could put the photo up here for those following along at home?

Assignment #1: think about all of the ideas above and decide which ones are most deserving of implementation.

Assignment #2: come next week

Assignment #3: bring a friend

Minutes for 4 June 2009

Attendance
Record attendance! Including: Kauri, Igor, Suzie, Chris, Jessica, Megan, Taylor, James, Josh, and Diane.

The Poems
Many excellent poems shared, including a number of entertaining Prohibition songs that Megan got from original early 20th century sources. Igor astounded us with his poetic fluency in a language that is not his native tongue. Suzie read a psalm of her own composition written for her "Bible as Literature" class, plus a humorous quasi-psalm regarding her quest for a mate. Kauri began a sonnet (those are hard to finish in one club meeting) and Diane described her father as a fly assassin (meaning one who assassinates flies, not an assassin who is "fly", though I'm sure Diane's dad would be a really cool assassin should he pursue that occupation.) Jessica shared an introspective poem and another about sitting by the volleyball court. James read us a poem he wrote to one of his many female admirers. I added another tragic poem to my series of several (remember "And Ye Would Not!" ?) Megan proved herself adept at anti-liquor crusading as she tried her hand at Prohibition rally song-writing. And Chris recited his fabulous "Bats".

Refreshments
Ice cream was eaten later on, courtesy of Seth and his recent asceticism. Thanks, Seth!

Announcements
Next week we will meet at 8pm so we can go meet at a park or some other outdoor place and still have sufficient light.

Minutes 5/20/09

- The night began with an excursion to obtain the delicious, thirst-quenching, crave-satisfying, fantabulous juice-boxes.
- 2/3 of the poems written this evening praised the just-mentioned beverages.
- Taylor wrote an excellent poem which made little sense but sounded very poetic, and was, poetically, unfinished.
- Josh wrote a poem on his Macey's receipt, mentioning the name of a woman who will never know she was famous for about 2 minutes.
- Diane's poem took her too long to write for how it turned out. It was not proclaimed blog-worthy, even by her own, very forgiving standards. It remained unnamed, just as a child that a mother regrets bearing the moment it makes it's first cry.
- Josh shared some Spanish poetry, which Diane struggled to comprehend while Taylor enjoyed the company of his lappy.
- Diane missed Sarah Hall.
- Josh tried to convince Diane that they (Josh and Diane) once dated. No doubt that is what inspired the reading of Spanish poetry: in hopes to woo her.
- The poetry club enjoyed another fun and eventful evening, and Diane wondered why more people don't come. :)

Minutes: 15 January 2009

15 Jan 2009: The first Altoid poeticization session of the new year.
Attending: Megan, Diane, Josh, and Sarah, with Gabe "observing" (i.e. doing his homework in the same room as us).

Free write topics/titles:

• Megan: a shipwreck
• Diane: Poet's Query (she just posted it here on the blog)
• Josh: first 8 lines of a happy sonnet. (This provoked discussion of why it's often easier to write depressing poetry.)
  
• Sarah: the water polo game!
• Gabe: ATATATGCCCCCGCCGTCACTCA (he was working on bioinformatics stuff -- very poetic)

We read a couple of ode-ish sonnets: "To Night" and "To Science". I was planning on reading Kim's recently completed Black and White poem, but I forgot until too late :-(

Closing free write didn't happen this time. Instead, we concluded by discussing the possibility of having a Special Shakespeare Edition of the Altoids -- getting together to read a play, maybe combined with dinner??

Thanks for coming those who did, and those who didn't, feel free to come next week! (Thursday lounge 9pm or apt 304 if lounge is occupied)