Taught through the Flatiron Writers Room. This class meets online via Zoom videoconferencing on Tuesday, May 5, 2020, 6-8:30 p.m.
Ekphrastic art is work made in response to another piece of artwork. It can be a story jump-started by a painting, a song inspired by a sculpture or — to paraphrase a cliche — a dance about architecture. In this workshop, we’ll focus on poetry as our medium and, while writers may use any poetic form to which they feel called, those new to poetry and/or ekphrastic work are encouraged to use freeform or prose poetry.
The workshop will include a discussion of ekphrastic art and examples of it from our own bodies of work (it’s likely we’ve all made ekphrastic art, even if unintentionally). We’ll also talk about ekphrastic art as a means of collaboration with a knowing or unknowing fellow artist. And we’ll work on outlining and/or writing poems in response to several artistic works of various mediums.
Workshop participants should have two pieces of art in mind, with an image handy.
1) One they’ve long been inspired by or to which they’ve felt called to respond.
2) One they’ve recently discovered.
These artworks can be in any medium, from literary or visual (painting, drawing, photography, etc.) to dramatic or cinematic, to performative or musical.
The workshop will include time for questions as well as tips and prompts for creating future ekphrastic poems, and resources, such as a number of museum collections and exhibitions that are online for free, virtual tours.
$40-$45. Register here.
Why Athena? The goddess of wisdom, courage and the arts is exactly the spirit we need to call in right now, in this time of #METOO, political and environmental anxiety, and the kind of reshaping and intense transformation many of us are experiencing. Athena is also known as the goddess of war, but I prefer to focus on her qualities of justice, strategy and strength.