​Betrayal: the Language of Descent       

Francis. There’s no ascension 
in this triptych. Only
your lover

seated on a chair, 
seen from behind,
his naked back bent 

before a painting.
In the left and right panels
he faces a portrait of himself,  

a mirror of his head
enlarged and blotched,                                    
the bruises black. 

Stigmata of your betrayal, Francis?
Rejection a language of descent.                    
Anger and despair grown dense

until tremor, 
silent crack, avalanche, 
collapse.       
                                
Your lover’s suicide, 
perhaps,
revenge.

Hand’s anguished paint, a cry. 
The shoulder, once embraced.
Hunched muscle. Flesh. Pink slippage. 

Love’s last dark sluffing--
sorrow.
The central mirror, blank.

Ulrike Narwani

Ulrike Narwani, of Baltic-German heritage, grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. After living in the U.S., England, India, and Thailand for many years, she moved to Sidney, BC in 2003.  She and her husband, both passionate about flying, have co-written a memoir Above the Beaten Path about their adventures flying a single-engine Cessna 182—at times with one or more of their three children—throughout Canada, the States, and later into remote corners of the world. Collecting Silence (Ronsdale Press, 2017) is her debut volume of poetry. Ulrike Narwani is a lyric and haiku poet. Work appears in journals such Canadian Literature and The New Quarterly, and anthologies, most recently in Hologram: Homage to P.K. Page. Haiku have won the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Haiku contest.

The word "photography" means "drawing with light."

I'm so excited about teaching this four week course with the London Arts Based Research Centre. Don't miss this unique opportunity to learn more about the story of photography and how it changed the world, and how the art of photography can inspire your writing practice.

Explore the story of photography and use this magical fusion of science and technology to ignite your poems and stories. We will look at the history of photography, and the practice of ekphrasis, that is, creative writing inspired by visual art, to create a body of poetry or stories. This course will look at different ways we can approach and respond to photographic imagery to fuel our writing, with an emphasis on women photographers.

It will be magical! Join us!

​https://www.tickettailor.com/events/londonartsbasedresearchcentremethodsltd/2083232

Homage to Louise Nevelson
​
Random wooden scraps,
purposefully assembled,
into a choregraphed rhythm
of artist’s vision.
 
Monochromatic matte paint
envelops the viewer in peace,
that only falling feathers know,
a visual meditation of form and flow.
 
Hundreds of broken pieces,
masterfully arranged,
exuding hope within the wall they’re contained, 
grace living unrestrained.
 
These stray fragments, 
lost, discarded, unwanted bits 
painted like this, 
emanate ethereal bliss.
 
Riding the line,
between two and three dimensions,
inventing spaces, evoking sensations,
defying conventions.
 
These collages of organized chaos,
a metaphor of life: 
still and unbothered,
perfectly confined strife.

Maureen Reynosa-Braak​

Maureen Reynosa-Braak writes poetry that explores the universal complexities of relationships, profound loss and healing found through creative expression and connection with people and nature. Her work is deeply rooted in personal experiences and the belief that art – in its many forms – can transform pain into beauty. Maureen lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Interview with Janée J. Baugher, author of The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles
(Winner of Tupelo Press’s Dorset Prize)
 
Janée, will you tell our readers a bit about your ekphrastic journey?
 
For me, writing ekphrastically became an important stay against the drudgery of my boring life. In his essays, T. S. Eliot talks about extinguishing the personality in light of the demands of the imagination. Poet Rilke also had adopted the method of subverting the needs of the self for the needs of the object the writer chooses to engage with. Once it clicked for me to turn my gaze away from the self and to an object d’art, I knew I’d found the artistic method that works best for me.

What drew you to the artwork of American painter Andrew Wyeth?  

As museum-goers, we make the mistake of solely bringing our cerebral side to the art engagement. When we behold a work of art and ask, “what does it mean” or “what was the artist’s intention,” those types of questions further separate us from the art-making as a creative act and an artwork, a creative product. In 2006 at the Philadelphia Art Museum when I stood before the first Wyeth painting that I had ever seen (Trodden Weeds) my imagination soared. As I strolled from canvas to canvas, I sensed vastness in his muted tones, sparce settings, and sprawling landscapes. In his work, there’s space for me to explore visually and to dive in emotionally. It’s tenderness. That’s what I see in his work, and it’s what I was after in my poetry collection, The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles.

Which Andrew Wyeth paintings are your favourites?   

I was immediately taken with Sunflowers, 1982. However, I struggled because what could I say about something as pure as sunflowers? I laboured for weeks before I found the poem’s central tension. One morning, as I sat free-writing on the porch of the house at the Write On Door County residency, a spider appeared. When something as miraculous as a spider walks near enough to touch, everything must stop (at least that’s my philosophy). So, I watched her and I listened and I wondered. It was raining and she eventually crawled under the cover of the porch, and the whole thing moved me. Her presence was a gift, and it was just what my poem needed. 
 
My poem, “Andrew Wyeth’s Footnotes to Cosmos, 2005” is my wee underdog. While a majority of The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles poems had found previous homes in literary journals, this poem had not. Cosmos are my favourite flowers mostly because they’re not at all ostentatious: they’re without fragrance and they grow as freely as weeds. While Wyeth might have painted roses, hydrangeas, or hyacinths, I particularly love the humility of his cosmos. 

Tell us something about your ekphrastic process.  

It’s the visual stimulation of ekphrastic writing that piques my wonderment. Before an artwork, I reach for my pen and notebook and I free-write at a feverish pace. Speed-writing prevents my logical brain from interrupting what the unconscious mind has to show me. The words have a mind of their own and my job in that moment, standing on the gallery floor, is about writing without thinking. 

Was there a poem that proved especially difficult or challenging?  

From my Window, 1974 intrigued me, for it appears at though Wyeth were actually standing at a window and had painted the snow-covered structure outside it. Yet, I needed a backstory, an emotional point-of-view, and I struggled inventing it. Then I turned to the painting’s date, which prompted me to look at Andrew Wyeth’s biographical events. I learned that in 1973 his mother had passed away. Huzzah. I was awash with ideas about him as a bereaved son looking out the window and reminiscing about his loving mother. Of course, this is my invention, as no one knows what all was on Wyeth’s mind as he painted.

What new projects are you working on?  

Late spring of 2025 I was diagnosed with cancer. While I thought my life’s work would never stray from the state of personal detachment, the diagnosis has creatively compelled me to turn my gaze toward the self. I don’t know what will become of the “Cancer Pages” manuscript, but I’m curious to see where it’ll take me.
 
**

Purchase The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles (Tupelo Press, Feb. 2026) through University of Chicago Press: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo266703933.html
​ 
At Amazon: 
​https://www.amazon.com/-/fr/Andrew-Wyeth-Chronicles-Jan%C3%A9e-Baugher/dp/1961209535

Winter Blues
 
Blue on blue on blue, a collection of you(s) 
through time:                    Here in the snow, tracks at your back, pelts 
in your hands, the dog in crouch points 
us toward what 
will become of this mountain once
you’re gone and with you the dream 
of fur peeled from flesh replaced 
with nylon and neoprene,
polyester sweaters, dye running in new 
chemical rivers.
 
Didn’t it used to be quieter on the ridge?
 
Or did we not know how to listen 
the way you did
for the briefest whisk of a switch,
the hitch of a hare’s breath, 
frozen in the air?

Courtney Sexton

Courtney Sexton earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her PhD from the George Washington University. She is an artist, dog scientist, and the Co-founder of DC-based nonprofit literary arts organization, The Inner Loop. In addition to her work community building, Courtney is a lecturer in the Medical Humanities at Georgetown University and a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech, where her research explores human-animal relationships. She is a Virginia Tech Research & Innovation Scholar (2024), Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute Fellow (2022), AAAS Mass Media Fellow (2020), and DCCAH Arts & Humanities Fellow (2018; 2022; 2025-26). Her work can be found all around.

Greetings, Ekphrastic Readers!

I’m Stephen Kingsnorth, a regular ekphrastic challenge participant. 

I love paintings which evoke memories personal to me, and so many do.

These choices are a few of my own poems that I revisit as I think them more fruitful than most of my other musings - which may not say much for my poetic output...!

**

Wailing Wall, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/gustave-dore-ekphrastic-writing-responses

Although there is a rhyme scheme, it is so discreet I barely recognize it, until the third re-reading!

**

Need not Greed, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/need-not-greed-by-stephen-kingsnorth

I love this picture as it roots the "sacred" in the "real'"..

**

Rose Bowl. by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/rose-bowl-by-stephen-kingsnorth

Childhood memories evoked....

**

Heroes' Odyssey, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/jimmy-cochran-ekphrastic-writing-responses

From school desk to stardust...

**

Breeches Buoy, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/fernando-vicente-ekphrastic-writing-responses

Memories of school stagework...

**

Architexture Passage, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/camille-pissarro-ekphrastic-writing-responses

Simply a delightful, observant painting...

**

Passing, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/kate-vale-ekphrastic-writing-responses-curated-by-kate-copeland

My tribute on the passing of Queen Elizabeth II

**

Home, Everlasting, by Stephen Kingsnorth 

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/kitty-north-ekphrastic-writing-responses-curated-by-kate-copeland

The theological married to home territory....

**

Craftmanship, by Stephen Kingsnorth

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/hector-hyppolite-ekphrastic-writing-responses

An artwork stirring, for me, very personal memories

**

Oranges and Cherries, by Stephen Kingsnorth

http://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic/oranges-and-cherries-by-stephen-kingsnorth

The very picture facing me as I write.... financially worthless, yet quite invaluable to me


**

Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including The Ekphrastic Review.  He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.  His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com

Mr Melon Has a Dream

Mr Melon has been walking for a long, long time. It is hot. He needs a rest. The fields stretch on and on in front of him. They disappear behind him for miles and miles. To either side are more fields, filled with early wheat. Green shoots with fledgling ears lapping at the back of the hedges, destined to become slender yellow stalks, are waving in the warm summer winds, like a drowning man reaching out for a lifebelt.  

Mr Melon doesn’t like wheat or barley or corn or fields or the countryside. He wants to be back in his flat in the old part of town. He woke up maybe yesterday, maybe last week or month or year. He doesn’t know. He only knows that he had to start walking. His dream had shown him the way. He must walk until he can walk no more. And then he must wait. When the world is ready the path will open up in front of him and he will know everything that is known. He will know the full meaning behind his life.  

Mr Melon sits down on the nearest bit of hedge. It looks spikey with its branches, roughly trimmed by mechanical hedge-cutters, and its dark green holly-like leaves but it feels like the finest feather mattress with sumptuous layers of horse-hair for cushioning. He luxuriates in the unexpected comfort. He swings himself round to lift his legs onto this unexpected bed. He lowers his torso down and lets out a long sigh. He hopes this is it. Where his journey ends. 

Mr Melon closes his eyes and feels the rays of the sun on his face. They are warm. It must be summer here. It must be early afternoon. He feels a lightness as though he is floating. Birds chirp and caw and coo. He opens his eyes and sees a flock of doves swooping and soaring on the thermals. He smiles. He feels the flutter of wings as a dove lands on his chest, followed by another and another and another. 

Mr Melon surrenders to the dream of yesterday. So be it he thinks. So be it. Their claws look sharp but they are as soft as down. He is reminded of the cushioned drumsticks that the head of the annual parade in his Quarter uses to thrash the big drum he straps to his chest. He closes his eyes for a second time and waits. Slowly he feels his back lift off the hedge. Then his crumpled, ancient arse. Then his legs. Finally his feet. 

“I am levitating,” he thinks to himself. 

“I am levitating,” he says out loud.

Mr Melon hears the birds coo and feels the flapping of a thousand wings above him and beneath him and beside him. He is flying. He opens his eyes. The blue sky of afternoon has become the russet hues of evening. 

“Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight,” he thinks to himself. 

“Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,” he says out loud. 

Mr Melon flies with the birds until the sky becomes purple twilight. Ahead he sees a shimmer of silver light and the sound of more birds. The doves are singing now in harmony with the new white birds of the light. He feels very sleepy. Sleepy like he has never felt before. His arms and legs and head feel too heavy to move. 

“I can’t move,” he thinks to himself. 
​
“I can’t move’” he tries to say out loud. He can’t speak. 

Mr Melon and the birds have reached the land of the shimmering light. The warmth of the light fills his body through to his bones. His warmed eyelids soothe his tired eyeballs and open his mind’s eye. He sees his mother, his father, his brothers, his neighbours, the raggedy children running around his streets. All the dogs he ever loved flash through his thoughts. He smiles. 

Mr Melon feels the lightness again. The birds are leaving now, one by one. He floats like a feather, gently buffeted by the thermals as he descends slowly slowly through the purple twilight and the russet sky and the blue afternoon. He sees the fields below him and the spire of the Cathedral in his town. The last two doves guide him carefully across the landscape and down, down into the familiar smell of his Quarter. The distinctive aroma of people who work for a living. Tobacco, freshly baked bread and warm dirt. The birds manoeuvere him between chimneys and washing lines and balconies. 

Mr Melon sees the front of his building. His blinds are pulled down. He must have forgotten to pull them up when he left for his walk. He sees the Cathedral Square up ahead. There is a procession. At first he thinks it is a feast day. Then he sees the coffin, raised high on the shoulders of six strong men. He recognizes Lucian, one of his nephews. Surprised, he looks more closely and sees two more nephews. Bringing up the rear is the stooped back of Marcel, his sister’s husband. Surely Veronique hasn’t passed in the time he has been away? No, there she is behind the coffin with his nieces on either side. Behind them, an elderly cousin. He spots his Pétanque friends. Jacques has Mr Melon’s distinctive yellow pétanque set in his hands. Monsieur Cheval, the grumpy tobacconist who sells him his Gitanes, and Ahmed, who runs the mini-mart, are here. He spots the mothers along the pavement, leaning on the shoulders of the boys he coaches football. He smiles. There’s little Nico, who could play for France if only his Italian mother lets him. Opposite are the stray cats he feeds, keeping their distance from the dogs of the town, the ones he pats and slips treats to on his daily promenade. 

Mr Melon feels the tears prick the back of his eyes. This is the meaning that the world had ready to reveal to him. His journey is over. His heart soars. He is ready to go home. 

Caroline Mohan
​
Caroline Mohan lives in the North West of Ireland and writes sporadically - mostly stories with the occasional poem and mostly in workshops. She has had a number of pieces chosen for the Ekphrastic Challenges. 

Elegy to the Shattered Mosaic 
 
“Ukrainians recreate damaged Mariupol mosaic as a symbol of hope. An exact reproduction of a Soviet-era mosaic destroyed during Russia's 2022 siege of Mariupol has been unveiled in Kyiv's Maidan Square, offering a sense of cultural resilience and identity in times of conflict.” 
– CGTN (Source: Reuters)
 
Oh, sweet kestrel 
how high you soared 
determined and steady 
gliding across sky, 
heartbeat quickening.
 
Majestic bird of prey 
fluttering midair 
you were borne from hands
of dissident artists, crafted 
of opaque marbled glass,  
 
ceramic tiles, glinting
aluminum spoons. 
Echoing rich folk tradition,
spanning an entire seaside
restaurant wall 
 
flying amid shimmering cascades 
of vivid blue, gray and green,
the burnt amber of setting sun,
beak held high 
yes, defiant and proud. 
 
When artillery fire first rocked
your city, you held strong 
through explosions, 
the barbarity of invasion,
till the deep strikes 
 
left a gaping wound 
glass and metal 
crashing down
rubble everywhere
in now-occupied territory.
 
 Oh, dear kestrel 
you are not forgotten,
every tile and sheet
of metal replicated 
from archival photos.
 
Each subtle colour, 
each sculptural texture 
gleams anew.
What was lost 
is now restored.
 
Oh, majestic kestrel 
How you soar.

​​Ksenia Rychtycka

Ksenia Rychtycka, a Michigan-based poet and writer, is the author of the award-winning poetry chapbook A Sky Full of Wings and the short story collection Crossing the Border. Ksenia has traveled through 12 countries in Europe and worked as an editor in Ukraine during the early years of the post-Soviet era. Recent work has appeared in Peninsula Poets and The Poetry Distillery.