The Lyric Lounge Promotions and Events Team Meeting @ New Walk Museum July 17th

James Black

The third meeting of the Promotions and Events team for the Lyric Lounge took place at New Walk Museum on Saturday 17^th July. The meeting focused more on the creative process than either of the previous two sessions as the group put pen to paper and came up with some original pieces of writing that describe the objects and architecture of the museum.

The meeting began in the gardens of New Walk Museum. Lydia was kind enough to furnish us with two trays of sandwiches and not just any old sandwiches either: there was a choice of vegetarian or meat fillings with each dainty morsel having had the crusts neatly trimmed off à la the Women’s Institute or Conservative Party Conference, oh yes, it was all terribly British! After 15 minutes the vegetarian tray was empty but five or six meat sandwiches still remained. This situation gave some pause for thought: are the majority of poets veggies or was this a freak occurrence peculiar to Lyric Lounge volunteers? We may never have a definite answer…

Once the group had assembled in the Council Room Lydia suggested that we all try to write about the first thing that comes into our minds and to continue writing for the following three minutes without pause or hesitation. This stream-of-consciousness exercise was designed to help stop us from censoring our thoughts and to actually get something written down. A couple of members of the group shared what they had written. Sunil’s work contemplated the loneliness of the uneaten sandwiches which sat before him: picked over and cruelly left behind. Rachel read a piece which recalled her overindulgent past regarding the over-consumption of sandwiches and the trouble this caused in her life. I know what you are thinking: are sandwiches the root of all evil? I suppose by now you can understand why I was blathering on about them so much.

As Lydia came up with each writing exercise she felt herself under mounting pressure as the Book Doctor herself Alison Dunne was present to watch her every move, (you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife given the competitive nature of these fellow poets!) However, Lydia managed to overcome the stress of the situation and came up with some excellent and inventive ideas to get us writing. One such idea was to give us fifteen minutes to go out into the museum and find ten objects to metaphorically describe. Striking images such as the piano being encased in body bag, the metallic grill on the floor of the museum being a prison and a penguin being an army general were then shared with the reassembled group.

Each person then selected one metaphor from their list of ten and wrote an extended piece using the same stream- of-consciousness technique as earlier – James Joyce would have been proud! This time instead of everyone taking turns to read what they had written we each read just one individual sentence from our writing.

As each unconnected sentence echoed through the museum a synergy of breathtaking creativity unfolded almost moving Lydia, (the powerful pink-haired poetess,) to tears! Lydia then told of her intention to post our pieces of writing around New Walk Museum over the three day period of the Lyric Lounge to emphasise the poetry aspect of this multifaceted event which includes juggling, knitting, music, dance and POETRY!