The Well School Ekphrastic Poetry Project

The Well School Ekphrastic Poetry Project

editor's note: The Ekphrastic Review is pleased to showcase a special presentation of student writing from The Well School in New Hampshire. 

The Well School was founded in 1967 and is located in Peterborough, New Hampshire. At the Well, students are encouraged to develop a lifelong reservoir of knowledge and curiosity grounded in nature, project-based learning, self-discovery, and the arts.

http://thewellschool.org/

This collection was written by students as part of The Well School annual Project Week, facilitated and curated by a Well School parent-volunteer. During Project Week, which occurs during the last 3 weeks of school, Well community parents offer projects ranging from crafts and arts, to music, technology and life skills. Students choose— and commit— to several projects suiting their interests and curiosity. This year, over 100 projects were offered. For our project we read, wrote, workshopped and revised ekphrastic poetry over the course of 6 meetings, which we then shared with the school.
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Many thanks to The Well School faculty and staff for supporting our project, and teacher/artist Victoria Sager for tolerating cohabitation of her classroom.  A special thanks to the poets and artists whose inspiration helped inspire us: Elsa Dax, W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop,  Janine Pommy Vega, Georgia O’Keefe, William Carlos Williams, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Pieter Bruegel, Henri Matisse, Renee Magritte, Mary Oliver, Vincent Van Goh, Gary Snyder, W.D. Snodgrass, Franz Marc, and Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda.

These are our poems.
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Landsape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Bruegel (Netherlands). 1590-1595.

People

A blood curdling scream!
A boy falling from the sky
the sun's rays scatter.

The leaves rustle,  dead, empty.
The ground shakes in fear of itself.
People learn to forget what day of the week it is.
People never remember.

Emma Huckabone, age 11

Blue Horses, by Franz Marc (Germany). 1911.

Serenity of Horses on Canvas

I gaze into the painting of the blue horses.
Why are they blue I think to myself,
if only franz marc were here to answer.
The deep black manes of the horses
swish in an unseen breeze,
the blood red of the distance,
set back from the tranquility of the foreground.
The peaceful horses bowing to some unknown master,
horses as blue as sun on sea.
eyes and mane as black as a moonless night,
they snort and snuff unbothered by reality.
They do not care about the Monday blues.
I can see each stroke of oil paint on canvas.
A once empty wasteland of white
transformed into a world of infinite meaning.
I do not know what was in his mind
when Franz Marc painted this,
only the light of an invisible sun shining silken coats.
I cannot imagine one of these elegant
creatures tripping or stumbling,
like a man after a long night of drinking.
They do not know of such things,
neither of war, nor dark cruelty and greed.
Only chomping on long grasses.

Kalyn Ross, age 11

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso (Spain). 1937.

Beasts Inside

As if Pandora’s box of fears and worries exploded into sharp, splintering shards
They scream as the monsters jump from the darkness into the blinding light
No one can see as fear swallows them whole
A shadow draped, snarling
Wolf
A beast
Muffled chaos
From a child’s nightmare
Visions blur together
No one hears them
There is no reality
There is no protection
Only candle and moonlight, I did this to myself
Am I the monster?
Why would you let your imagination eat you alive?
The selfish peer into
Darkness
Only to regret it
Their fear grows
Then dies
With each breath as their dark
Creatures
Consume them
We live in a
broken
World
Full of
broken
People.

Ella Darowski, age 13

Poppy, by Georgia O'Keeffe (USA). 1927.

The Fire in the Poppy                              

                    The flower resembles fire waving in the wind imperfect with a dark black centre
The ashes not moving.
             Why does the fire move?
Why does it not stay still like a flower when the wind is not blowing.
            When the wind blows the fire comes out of the flower,
Burning going beyond the fire.
             Burning all but somehow  more poppies grow from
The ashes like a phoenix.
             Fire keeps them alive.

​Ezra Von Mertens, age 11

Watermelon, by Diego Rivera (Mexico). 1957.

A Watermelon

Soft, juicy,
delicious
Water       melon
Refreshing in a way that nobody can explain

How… did watermelon come along?
                                All the labour that goes into growing them,
every person works hard for the money.
                        Just for something that never lasts
because everybody wants to devour the melon.
Oil on masonite.
          Minutes it takes to get to the store,
                         you look at the fruits and vegetables , we are lucky to some extent.
After you get home you cut the watermelon… a party!
  Everyone needs watermelon.
  The simple things in life are not.

Emma Huckabone, age 11

Portrait of Luther Burbank, by Frida Kahlo (Mexico). 1931.

This

Long curtains of earth
Hang
The dark, twisting roots
Feed
Off of orange
Flesh
Using others to help yourself
Grow
Life
Simply comes from the
Life or
Death of
Others
But the long forgotten, mossy
Body
Never deserved
this

Ella Darowski, age 13

Venus and Mars, by Elsa Dax (France). Contemporary. © Elsa Dax, stuckism.com. Wikicommons/ GFDL

The Hidden Love

She looks at him,
He stares back.
She lounges on a couch made of colour.
He stands on a porch made of shadow.
Their worlds are so different!
Her world is bright, growing, and curvy.
His world is cruel, uneven, and sharp.
Her world has the movement of  wind blowing.
His world has the movement of blood dripping.
Her world has the sound of animals playing and talking.
His world has the sound of armour clinking together.
Her world celebrates.
His world kills.
How are they in love?

Clara Smith, age 11

Untitled, by Rene Magritte (France). Exact date unknown. 20th century.

 Distortion of Reality

Why was this made?
The tide is uneven
Yet the clouds align
The glass stays the same
But the ball disappears
Look to the centre
The painting
Inside a paining
How can something
As simple as paint
Confuse someone so
It casts a shadow
Too small for itself
I would try to imagine
A ship sailing on the
Crystal water                               
No one looking
Can decide
What reality is.
What  is reality?

Kalyn Ross, age 11 

Venus and Mars, by Elsa Dax (France). Contemporary. © Elsa Dax, stuckism.com. Wikicommons/ GFDL

The Gateway

An evil spirit with sword and shield in the dark,
             he has a helmet that protects his head in the wars of sadness
             that he fights every day.
He stands in a doorway with a black sea behind him.
Cannons firing in the distance always war on Mars
             no rest for the weak or defenseless.
The fight he fights every day will never end.
A new war will begin.
             She sits in her chair of love and beauty.
Her hair waving in the wind,
fire in the distance,
trees birds grass.
But somehow they are connected by earth
             Earth has both beauty and war.
Not one or the other, but both.
 
Ezra Von Mertens, age 11

Footprints

Green.
The light, yet bright colour of spring.
It is everywhere you turn.
The ferns, the moss, the grass, and most of all, the leaves.
The rain lightly pattering on the leaves
gives way to sunshine.
A bird calls, trying  to gain something’s attention.
Soft, wet, sand sinks beneath heavy footsteps.
Almost invisible chipmunks scurry up trees, showering us in rainwater.
“Look!” someone says, pointing.
Pink Rhododendrons blink at us through the air.
The rainwater seems to magnetize towards the ground,
slipping from leaf to leaf, then finally forming pools at our feet.
A bird answers the previous call, sounding  almost…....hopeful?
I hear everyone’s footfalls, heavy on the now more solid ground.
The small structures of the village stare at us,
intruders of their place.
Animals roam their enclosures.
I see a container holding sand for sanding the roads in the winter.
Why do they sand roads made of sand?
See? There is no answer.
Our steps are silenced by the pine needles on the ground.
Back on the campus of The Well,
I see red buildings, extreme contrast to the green of spring.
Here the ground is uneven yet sturdy.

Clara Smith, age 11