MWG’s first meeting was today, and it consisted of Karen, Jordan Chiang, and myself – not the biggest turn out, but I guess we can’t expect too much from the very first session. I must admit that, upon arriving, the event seemed unorganized due to a lack of reserved meeting space. We set ourselves up in the designated spot between Angus Glen’s basketball court and hockey rink on the second floor, but we didn’t anticipate how inconducive or unprofessional the place could be to a group that wants to take itself seriously. At least we know better this time around, and will be better prepared when more members join.
Other than that, the meeting was fairly productive. Earlier this week Karen and I were messaged by Donna Marrin from the Markham Village Writers’ Group, which has apparently been around for about ten years. Unfortunately it has existed in relative anonymity or obscurity, as neither Karen or myself knew of its existence and had difficulty finding out about it even after much rigorous research into the matter. Still, they requested for us either to join their group (not an option!) or change our name. Although we weren’t able to resolve this issue today, we’re still working on it and will hopefully come up with more workable titles.
On another note, we each briefly discussed our interests and expectations and settled on a topic for next week’s discussion: poetry and multiculturalism. None of us are very familiar with poetry as a writing form and picked it so that we could venture beyond our comfort zone. Karen and I also managed to briefly discuss our greater community-wide objectives, but I anticipate this to be something we will have to mainly figure out on our own time. We’ll allow members to get involved if they’d like, but other than that, we can’t take up our biweekly meeting time with organizational issues all the time.
Again, for more information about upcoming meetings check out the MWG’s official website. We will soon revamp the page with submission listings and reading lists.