On another literary bent, IWLTS 'You are lovely, and it was a great idea, but you need to take charge a bit more or this isn't going to work.'
To a poet friend, who is running a poetry appreciation Zoom thing. She is good, and the poems she chooses are excellent, and have introduced me to a lot of new poets. The people who go are interesting, and in theory the evenings are enjoyable. In practice, though, it's massively frustrating, as the format is that we are sent poems in advance then get divided into groups of 3-4 to discuss them one at a time before feeding back to the whole group. The small groups are randomised so we all get to 'meet' more people, but this means that the gobshites (entirely coincidentally three men and a transwoman ;) ) who like the sound of their own voices are spread out, and are impossible to avoid. They dominate the groups, select themselves to do the feedback and then feed back their own views, which are by no means necessarily those of the rest of the group. It has put off at least couple of women who used to go, and I am also losing patience with it, which is a shame. There is no private space in the group to feed this back or discuss it, and I'm not sure whether to email her with my thoughts, or whether that would be presumptuous. It's her baby, and she makes a living by running poetry/artistic events, so knows what she is doing, and the attendance is still pretty good, so maybe not everyone feels the same.
