Ekphrastic Writing Challenge Thank you to everyone who participated in our Xavier Mellery writing challenge, which ends today. Accepted responses will be published on October 23, 2018. The prompt this time is Woman in the Mirror, by Cagnaccio di San Pietro. Deadline is November 2, 2018. Everyone can participate! Try something new if you've never written from visual art before and discover why there are so many of us devotees. Ekphrastic writing helps artists and lovers of art to look more carefully, from different angles or mindsets, at visual art. And it helps writers discover new ways of approaching their work, their experiences, and writing itself. The rules are simple. The Rules 1. Use this prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the painting or artist and use your discoveries to fuel your writing, or you can let the image alone provoke your imagination. 2. Write as many poems and stories as you like. 3. Have fun. 4. Send only your best results to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. 5. Include CAGNACCIO DI SAN PIETRO WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please, so that your submission doesn't get lost in the sea of emails. Mislabelled or unlabelled emails end up in with regular submissions, which are viewed in chronological order of receipt and not considered for the challenge. Submissions discovered after the deadline due to omission of subject line will be discarded. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Deadline is November 2, 2018. 8. Please do not send revisions, corrections, or changes to your poetry or your biography after the fact. If it's not ready yet, hang on to it until it is. 9. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 10. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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Black Iris
On aching stems, pearling beads at each petal's end are a dirt mound's clout manifest. That this image casts flitting shade in high esteem of its own bloom is obvious. The iris unfurls, its petals spread. Fanning outward like velvet cloth, the flower's newfound shape reveals strong purples dotting intimations in deep red. Paint drips, how could it not? Drawing from fertile dirt, the flower is not the least bit delicate. Sweat at play on the petal's fronds yet lingers along each bristle's tip. An eye enlightened to the iris, paint is a shut eyelid that masks the whiteness of the canvas. The flower reflects a semblance of the painter's self, it harbors an ineffable sense of emptiness that is teased out by the graceful ebb of petals being folded back. Steven Goff Steven Goff is a poet, playwright, and visual artist living in Philadelphia, PA who writes personal poems indicative of city life in the tri-state area as well as ekphrastic and literary leaning poetry. A recent graduate of Drexel University, his works have appeared in such publications as The 33rd and Pendora Magazine. Intoxicated by Verses
Even the Persian translation, the small print beneath each calligraphed line was in another language. How scholarly I was at ten, squatting cross-legged on the floor, hunched over my book of spells, spread daily on my knees. It was forbidden to touch the verses. With the whole length of my arm, I turned the pages from one corner of the magic world to another, careful not to scare the sacred and the gold accents suspended about the Arab words, twinkling like little blades on the page. It was forbidden to recite in a foreign tongue. How I loved the hard tongue of God pushing consonants to the back of my throat, slicing my lips with long vowels, to pull gently on my breath with surahs. Incantations rose in secret from inside my white chador-- a floating tent, sown with sunny daisies, smiling like childhood. I drank from the turquoise banks, the hand-painted margins that hemmed in faith and bred pretty flowers I was allowed to touch. I rocked softly to and fro to the verses rising sibylline from my pliant throat, until hollowed and airy, I sat an erect dome on my bedroom floor encircled by birds of praise, nesting, singing flying in and out of my chador. Each surah was an incomprehensible spell uttered from my proud minaret, and my cupped hands before me an invitation extended, for God to join me and dance on the naked waters of my childhood. Later it was forbidden to dance. Rooja Mohassessy Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-American living in California. She is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Pacific University. Editor's note: Iranian Artist Bahman Mohasses was a prolific artist working in sculpture, assemblage, and painting, as well as theatre and literary translation. He studied, worked and lived between Italy and Iran. He is known as the "Persian Picasso" and is considered by many to be most prominent Iranian artist of the past century. Many of his works were destroyed by the Iranian authorities during the Islamic Revolution, and the artist later destroyed many works himself. Remaining works are rare and in high demand by collectors. The Iranian-American poet Rooja Mohassessy is his niece. Frida Kahlo Speaks:
Fidelity is a bourgeois virtue. Diego Rivera There are two Fridas, the one you want, and the one you don’t want. You might have thought I wore this white dress for you, Diego, piled this hibiscus in my hair, threaded azul chunks of sky around my throat. But I did it for myself. I paint myself. Look at me. I wear a necklace of thorns; a hummingbird dangles between my breasts. My heart is a bloody shrine trapped in a corset of pain. But I will rise, a Bird of Paradise. I will enter your body like a jolt of caffeine. At last I have learned that life is this way, and the rest is window- dressing. I will carve Viva la Vida on this watermelon, like a tombstone. I hope the ending is joyful, and I hope I never return. Barbara Crooker This poem was first published in Barbara Crooker's book, More, C&R Press, 2010. Barbara Crooker is the author of eight books of poetry; Les Fauves is the most recent. Her work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, The Poetry of Presence and Nasty Women: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse. www.barbaracrooker.com great lady
what is not torn is twisted—every fiber sharp as broken wood. no trace of sweet to soothe my bitter, loosened lock, my chiseled cheek; broken flute, mother of mud, my hair is stiff-- breasts pull my frame like mottled pears, girl swells sag to angles in self-carving weight. I am sorrow, flat on vincent’s troubled sheet. his hands that zealous, fill my child's mouth are futile in their wheat as crippled crows. a death cry, keening my harlot’s hearth-- drawn erect, the pride of pathos, matrix of the earth. Patricia Farnelli Patricia Farnelli worked as a staff writer/reporter for 30 years, for half a dozen newspapers. She has taught in public and private schools and community colleges; milked, fed and scraped stalls for 40 cows; grew vegetables for opera singers; and worked as a migrant farmer. Recently, she began to write poetry again. Model with Unfinished Self-Portrait
I I am the dreamer in the background, always dreaming; just now I dreamt six tulips for me and a dozen for him, I dream all the time like this, stopping and starting - and when it suits me, I can even change the course of things. Take my unfinished masterpiece; is it masterful because it is unfinished or unfinished because it is masterful? Although such conundrums belong to the audience, I’ve become adept at answering my own rhetoric. An outline is only an outline, so long as you perceive it as an outline. Let me sketch it our a little more clearly. Seeing comes first, believing comes later. The trick is to see what you believe and not believe what you see. I do not paint as I see but how I believe it to be. Believing takes precedence over seeing and dreaming still takes precedence over living, the rest is as it should be. Join the march, bang the drum. You are here of your own free will. II I am the dreamer in the foreground, always dreaming; just now I dreamt the world had shrunk to this little corner between us, our little piece of history - magnified, a lasting testament to the secret life of paintings, two dreamers together with their little song: This is order, this is chaos, we are young, we are ageless. I look enigmatic. ‘Just do your own thing’, he says, ‘don’t be too abstruse.’ I know my role. History beckons. We think alike. I am on board ship for no other reason than the price. Half finished, half famous. I foresee only minor difficulties. The picture remains a major work in my mother’s eyes, what more approval does a son need? To acquiesce to a mother’s judgment is critical. The problem with history is rendering. I remain tight lipped. After all, an artist’s model should be open to interpretation. The problem with art is that it is never finished. Mark A. Murphy This piece is from the poet's manuscript, Our Little Bit Of Immortality, poems inspired by David Hockney's artwork. It is based specifically on the painting Model With Unfinished Self-Portrait (1977). Click here to view. Mark A. Murphy was born in West Yorkshire in 1969. He has been published in over 180 journals and ezines. His first collection, Tin Cat Alley was published in 1996. His next collection, Night Wanderer’s Plea is due out this September from Waterloo Press in the UK.
Shadow of a Girl Playing with a Hoolahoop It used to scare me, what this girl is doing, or those around her, off in the blind field. Seemingly a girl playing with a hoolahoop, or just a shadow, no source, just a shadow next to a wagon, its backdrop here a dusty plaza. Somewhere, I feel, from an upstairs room, an eye looks at me. Somewhere, off screen, a murder is taking place, this shade a clue. Even so, things are too belated now, this girl clearly a phantom and not a muse, like she’s in a toy shop or inside its puzzle, no girl playing so nonchalant with a hoop. The sun, at these times, is no longer a sun, more likely a lamp. My fingers are syllables. And this pine table where the postcard sits has all sorts of knots and faces of its own. Patrick Wright Patrick Wright has a poetry pamphlet, Nullaby, and forthcoming collection published by Eyewear. His poems have appeared in several magazines, including Agenda, Wasafiri, The Reader, London Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Ink, Sweat and Tears,and Iota. His poem ‘The End’ was recently included in The Best New British and Irish Poets Anthology 2018, judged by Maggie Smith. He has also been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. He is studying towards a PhD on ekphrastic responses to dark or near-black paintings, and he works as a Lecturer at The Open University where he teaches Creative Writing. Victorian Painting
The girl in the foreground is mute as the gray stump of house behind her. Something pushes out from behind her face, enlarges her ears, expands her head. Her hat no longer fits. It lies discarded on the lawn, red ribbon trailing. Her parents have not moved for an hour. The mother is sheathed in black, the father in Sunday best. The cat near the pram is not a cat at all, it is a stone. Nor is the sheep alive. It must have wandered into the yard and froze. Nothing moves here, though the girl may try. The hill beneath her feet is a gripped fist. Lawrence Kessenich This poem was first published by FutureCycle Press in Lawrence Kessenich's book, Before Whose Glory, 2013. Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry prize and has had three poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in the Sewanee Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and many other magazines. He has published four books of poetry and is the co-managing editor of Ibbetson Street. He had an essay featured on NPR’s “This I Believe” and in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. His plays have been produced in New York, Boston, and in Colorado, where he won an award in a national drama competition. His first novel, Cinnamon Girl, was published in September 2016. Learn more about his work at lawrence-writer.com. Herons In Reeds
Coiled beauty of the long necks pulled in, stilt legs like reeds in the rippled water, reeds like ghosts rising silhouetted toward a sickle moon. Symbol of steadfast love, twinned herons on the album that holds my wedding pictures. But all I can think about this morning is the braggadocio of the men I knew in youth, all those couplings and uncouplings. Penelope Moffet Penelope Moffet lives in Southern California. Her second chapbook, It Isn't That They Mean to Kill You, has just been published by Arroyo Seco Press. During August 2018 she participated in the August Poetry Postcard Festival, an international convocation of postcard-writing strangers, in the course of which she wrote 44 poems, most of them ekphrastic. Un Mundo
Ángeles Santos, 1929 A girl looked up from under a strangle of trees at the star-singed sky and wondered if it was true. If those strangely cloaked musicians strummed the same melodies for the angels that pricked the sun to light the stars. That strange kaleidoscope of flares. The others didn’t see it that way. Their music was thunder and their stars were clouds and the stairs leading to heaven weren’t blocked by angels but by a bend of indefinite darkness. Still, she saw the rows of the world they all shared. That they all danced and hid and loved in and she knew she could draw her candle on the surface of the dirt and out would spill one world. Hannah Wagener Hannah Wagener is a part-time poet and part-time embroidery artist. She is perhaps best known for her work as a background actor in South View Middle School's 2005 production of "The Hoboken Chicken Emergency." |
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