The Christmas Calendar

 Christmas comes but once a year, but preparing a calendar can take six months or more. We had the bright idea of creating a calendar featuring our poems. Somebody had the idea of adding our photo of Harrow. 

A member had a friend who could provide professional quality pictures for free. We decided we wanted our venue, Harrow Arts Centre, on the cover, and that would help sell the calendar. 

But we needed permission to take photos of the arts centre. Then we had to select sosmebody who was tough enough but warm enough to convince the Arts Centre to agree.

Te Professional photographer could not just give us free pictures of daffodils and so on, but had to spend time going around Harrow, for four seasons, to get suitable seasonal pictures for each month of the year, of Harrow venues. The photographer now wanted to be paid for the time and trouble. 

The locations of the photos had to be all over Harrow, voted by all, or with each member choosing a venue, because the photos had to be areas where all our members lived, otherwise we got arguments about favouritism. Everybody wanted a picture of the street where they lived, ideally from an angle showing their own home.

 In the end we had an agreement that the Arts centre shop would stock the calendar. And the local bookshops. I think they wanted to take a cut.  Not surprisingly. They have to pay staff and rent and council tax.

Now we were in business, not just metaphorically, but literally. This was not just a fun project for family and friends. The calendar had to look professional. 

What quality of paper? Matt or glossy? It had to take colour photos, look good, last all year.

How would you choose the poems? We could choose those poems which came first in contests. It turned out that one person usually came first, so that would have meant a calendar with almost all poems by one, two or three writers. Everybody wanted a poem in. Agreed.

But there were more than twelve of us. Twenty four poem. One from each person.  But two long poems and a photo left little room for the calendar.

If one person wrote a rhyming couplet about January and another wrote three pages about February, the calendar would not look neat. You would have lots of white space in January, and tiny print in February. We needed a minimum and maximum word length for poems. Our old poems which were too short or too long would not fit.

What would the tone and style be? Would poems on a theme, such as all about plants be too dull? Could we have a mix? Comic poems? Heartbreaking poems about the death of a loved one in December. Happy family poems? Summer sex? Science Fiction? A religious poem about Christmas? What about Hanukah and Hindu festivals? 

So we decided - after several weeks of phone calls, arguments, final agreement. the decisions were:

Everybody should submit poems. Each poem would have a word limit.