Am I imagining it but at meetings or assemblies in Australia, the audience always heads for the seats up the back, the first few rows remain empty. Maybe that gives us a clue to something.
Of course there is also the attrition due to circumstances beyond our control. Life's changes get in the way and some of our prominent members have died and some are aging and sick ( sorry that is inevitable ).
And also in my neck of the woods, the rural landscape of farms and bush homesteads etc. has been turned into gaping canyons of coal mines. Unless our local mob can find poetry in multi-national mining companies and mechanised gouging of the earth on a grand scale, I suppose that's one area where bush poetry is losing ground as an expression of people's experience. I guess bush poetry still resonates as a bit as nostalgia, but nostalgia can only last so long, we have to move on.
One thing I did think of but I don't know whether this is do-able, I wondered if it would be of any benefit if the forum had an on-line poetry comp with some sort of attractive prize. There are on-line comps. At one stage Maureen was giving little recognition awards for the workshop entries. Frank Daniel offered a book as a prize once for a comp in answering a question on-line. ( I won it, still have the autographed book
) . Of course that means a lot of work for the web techno nerds. hmm. perhaps too much for too few yet again. That's just a few of my rambling thoughts. I still can't come up with a sure answer.
