Conquering covid with Café Corner Writers

Or, to be more realistic, ‘slogging on during lockdown’, writes Sue Weekes.

The above group of writers of which I (Sue Weekes, pen name Suzanne Stewart) am a member originally sprang out of a taught course with the WEA. In 2018, we put together an anthology, and performed pieces from it as part of the Bristol Festival of Literature. This was well-received, and subsequently we decided to put together a new anthology which – more ambitiously – would be themed, and we would develop work around that. After some discussion, we hit on ‘Beauty and the Beast’, which could encompass any aspects of duality which inspired us, not only reframed versions of the original story!

We had started putting work together with a view to performance in the autumn of 2020 – and everyone knows what happened in the March of that year. At first we were all too busy coping with the situation to arrange meetings.

But then, thanks to a member skilled in hosting Zoom (or at least her marriage partner is) we started to have monthly meetings, which we backed up by emails so everyone had a chance to read the work which was aimed at the anthology. By early 2021, we had a finished product, thanks to another group member with excellent DTP skills, and a friend in the printing industry.

This autumn we are now hoping to meet ‘live’, and start planning a performance event to tie in with the anthology. The musical Beauty and the Beast has just arrived at the Bristol Hippodrome, although that wasn’t planned on purpose, it’s just a bit of zeitgeist.