Sometimes a group helps

The role of a writers’ group will elicit a range of responses.

Some find value in having a core circle that intensely critiques each participant’s ongoing work, while others – I’ll include myself – see that as limiting if the others are clueless about your style and vision. It’s the unpublished version of blind leading the blind.

Still, I have been greatly assisted by opportunities for weekly or monthly open reading sessions, starting with the Stoney Lonesome poets in Bloomington, Indiana, and picking up with the Café Eclipse evenings in Concord, New Hampshire; young poets who met at Barnes & Nobel in Manchester, New Hampshire; Isabel van Merlin’s Merrimack Mic coffeehouse nights in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Somehow, I didn’t feel that kinship in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.  Later, a monthly group known as Writers’ Night Out in Portsmouth, introduced a wide range of writers, both beginning amateurs and seasoned professionals, spanning fiction, non-fiction, poetry, advertising and public relations, script writing, and playwrighting. We never knew exactly what the mix would be, but it was always stimulating and we never felt a sense of competition, as far as I could tell. The tips and insights we shared could be quite useful. That’s where I first heard of Smashwords, for instance.

There were other stints where I was truly solo. I was never part of the Iron Pig group in the Mahoning Valley, for instance, though my artist then-wife had her gallery groups.

Baltimore had a large writers’ group that never quite jelled for me, though we did have a marvelous evening with Tom Clancy just before the release of his first movie. His honesty did offend some of those present, though I found it refreshing.

More recently, it’s come in the monthly open mics at the Eastport Arts Center, where spoken word usually alternates with music.

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The arts center does offer inspiration on other fronts, too, including the Sunday afternoon presentations through winter, plus concerts, plays, the film society, and even contradancing.

The arts center is one reason our community stands apart from many others. We had nothing like it in Dover, nearly 30 times the size.

My original expectation of dilettantes and artist wannabes was quickly dispelled. A key post-Covid Stage East production, for instance, was two one-act plays – Beckett and Cocteau. And some of the best chamber music and jazz I’ve heard anywhere has been here. So we get a good dose of deep work.

But lately I’ve been hearing stories of some of its founders, some of whom have died since my arrival. One, for instance, had worked closely with theater great Tyron Guthrie. You get the picture.

The full history still needs to be written. Not that I’m stepping forward.