Friday's On the Edge meeting and Saturday Critique group

I got permission from the poetry group, On the Edge, to include any information about their events and meetings on this blog. As many of you know, On the Edge grew out of WSJC when it began as a critique group for those members interested in writing and submitting poetry for contests and/or publication. The group is now a chapter of Missouri State Poetry Society; and as such, it maintains contact with poets all over Missouri, and takes part in the MSPS Summer and Winter contests. It's a great opportunity for poets to grow through sharing and critiquing each other's work. We also encourage members to attend such events as the state conference each year and other retreats and conference such as Lucidity Poetry Retreat held in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in April. If this appeals to you, contact Birma Castle at
birmacastel@yahoo.com for more information. The event is held at the Best Western Inn of the Ozarks in Eureka Springs which also gives us a special rate on rooms and has a very good conference center which we use for meetings. This years date are April 20-22. The cost of the conference is $35.00 registration and $18.00 for the awards banquet held on Thursday evening.

The other thing I wanted to let everyone know about is Saturday Writers. We had some good critiquing and some interesting discussion on several subjects. One of the things that came up was how to deal with that pesky backwards apostrophe when letters are dropped from the beginning of a word when writing on your computer. We had noticed that there was no way to automatically have the apostrophe turn toward the absent letters rather than towards the actual letters as if it were the beginning of an internal quotation. Annette Rey came up with a way of tricking her computer by typing any letter then an apostrophe then continuing the word. Save that then go back and delete the first letter and save again. Voila, a correctly placed apostrophe. Thank you, Annette. It is a little thing, I know; but one that drives us English majors and compulsive types crazy.