National Poetry Month: Writing Groups, Part 1

I attended the Spring 2017 edition of The Writer's Showcase at the Olde Brick Theatre in Scranton tonight, and ran into several fellow members of my old writing group. We reminisced a bit about old times and talked about the current state of open mics in the area.

Some - but not all -of the members of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective at the last meeting at the Vintage Theater on Penn Avenue in Scranton, May 26, 2012, shortly before the site closed. The group would continue to meet at the Northern Light coffee shop in Scranton and then return to the new location of the Vintage on Spruce Street, where it would remain until the final closure of the site in August 2014. The group would not long outlive the venue that had become its home. 

When I first joined the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers' Collective, it was with a mind to improving my skills as a short story writer, not as a poet. Frankly, taking up poetry again after a hiatus of over two decades was not something I had in mind. Besides, how could a writing group help a poet? Wouldn't changing a poem fundamentally change the work into something different from the poet's original intent?

I soon learned how a writing group could help with poetry, and some of the hazards involved in such a thing. More on that tomorrow.