Scottish Independence Guide: Writers Workshop

Scottish Independence Guide: Writers Workshop

R Eric Swanepoel author of Saving the World and Being Happy (The Computer Ager) and political activist has kindly agreed to form a writers workshop through this site.

Eric is willing to comment on short (not more than 2,000 words) essays, poems and works of fiction submitted to this site, the purpose of which is to help budding writers hone their talents.

Eric writes:

"The first month's theme is taken from the headline on Scotland on Sunday, 11 December 2005: 'Class divide: now it's even harder for the poor to get on. Scottish social mobility at its lowest since the 1930s.' Your work may illustrate or discuss this theme. Do not submit work if you are unwilling for both its good and bad points to be publicly discussed."

We will print the best submitted stories on this page.

Independence

In passing through the time of life,
we meet all creeds and kind.
And being independent,
is just a state of mind.

We greet our brothers in the street,
or maybe in the wynd.
And being independent,
is just a state of mind.

We all depend on others,
with lasting ties that bind.
And being independent,
is just a state of mind.

So when we take that final trip,
a journey seldom timed.
Then true Independence,
is ours to leave behind.

J.L.C.

Excellent!

This strikes me as a deceptively simple poem with more than one possible interpretation. You might have intended it to apply to politics as well as, for example, to raising children to be responsible and contributing members of society? I would like to think that you are also telling even the better off that they are not, in fact, entirely independent and that even they come to the same end as the rest of us.

I like the repetition and the way you have mentioned time at the begin and the end, tying it together.

Thank you very much for this contribution!

Warm regards, Eric