A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace‘s definition of the aims of poetry, “either to please or to educate” (Latin: aut delectare aut prodesse). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until as recently as the 1940s in urban settings.
— Wikipedia

A few weeks ago a group of writer friends got together for a weekend to focus on (mostly) poetry, without distractions. Life is busy, schoolwork takes a lot of your energy (whether you are student or teacher), children and pets expect a basic level of care, jobs demand our mental attention, and it can be difficult to fit your own writing time into…