 With just a couple of weeks left for our Bird Watching contest many of you have already sent your entries and are ready for another major ekphrastic writing challenge. We have gathered another intriguing collection of artworks, and the theme this time is Women Artists. Artists throughout history in many different cultures faced immense obstacles, and women even more so. Few female painters or sculptors have been acknowledged by history or books, and yet we have a rich legacy of creativity if we dig between the lines to find gold. The subject was so exciting that I got carried away. It was my intention to select 30 to 40 prompts to inspire your ekphrastic writing practice, but ended up with 60. Many more were left on the cutting room floor. I hope each artwork will lead you to study more works by the featured artists, to learn about their lives and work and the worlds they lived in. Use your ebook of 60 artworks as a reference and a book of writing prompts, now and forever. Purchase before the contest deadline also qualifies you to enter up to ten poems or stories. Selected entries will be published in The Ekphrastic Review, in a series of special showcases. We are absolutely delighted to have Alarie Tennille as our guest judge. Alarie is a long-time contributor to the journal, a consultant for our prize nominations, a winner of our Fantastic Ekphrastic Award for her outstanding contributions to the journal and to ekphrastic literature, and a widely published and loved poet. Alarie will choose a first place winner and two runners up from the published selections. The first place entry will receive $100 and each runner up will receive $50. Winners may be flash fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry. Your purchase of our ebooks has made it possible for us to offer cash prizes in these new contests at The Ekphrastic Review. Your support also helps with the time, maintenance, web and other expenses, and promotion of this journal. We can't thank you enough. RULES 1. Click on button below to get your ebook of sixty prompts by women artists. 2. Write from any or all of the artwork prompts. You may submit up to ten pieces. 3. Please submit all of your entries in one email. Wait until you have your complete entry to send. 4. You may write poetry, flash fiction, or creative nonfiction, or a combination, up to 1000 words each. 5. Deadline is July 7, 2021. 6. Send your entry to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. In subject line, put WOMEN ARTISTS CONTEST. 7. We hate to censor your creativity and will try to accommodate experimental formatting, but be aware that flush left formats work best for the web. Complicated formats or spacing is difficult or impossible to reproduce faithfully. 8. Your work must be inspired by the prompts in the book. They can incorporate a description of the art or connect to the artwork's history or subject matter, or to the artist biography, or they can use the art as a point of departure for imagination, memory, correlation, etc. In other words, the writing can be about the art or about anything else the art triggers you to dream up. 9. The Ekphrastic Review will publish selected works in special showcases from the entries. Of these selections, guest judge Alarie Tennille will choose her favourites. The judge's decisions are final. 10. The winners will receive $100 CAD for first place and $50 each of two runners up. Winners will be paid by PayPal. 11. Winners will be chosen and announced by the end of July 2021. 12. Please include a third person biography up to 100 words. 13. Please use copy and paste in body of email, or a word document. You may include a PDF to show formatting and italics, but please include it in addition to your copy and paste or word document. 13. Good luck and have fun!
0 Comments
 Resurrection Panel, Trebon Altarpiece, by Master of Trebon Altarpiece (Czech Republic) c. 1380s. Resurrected His face is serious, sad, as he raises his hand in warning to the stunned guards, tumbled at his feet. “Touch me not,” he says in a voice full of impossible distance, a cold echo from a deep well dark and damp as the grave. The armored men look up confused at his sudden apparition, their faces caught in expressions we recognize, their features those of ordinary men. Above them, above the stone lid of his coffin, the resurrected Christ floats, unearthed and unearthly his feet not planted anywhere but hanging straight from the pale body, so thin it seems fleshless, weightless, still marked by the wounds of crucifixion, but bloodless, strange, alive in some way unnatural, his triumph an outlaw grace, a miracle whose simple touch could burn the living down to bone. Mary McCarthy Mary McCarthy is a retired RN who has had a lifelong love of writing, literature and art, that makes ekphrastic a particular favorite. She finds these writing challenges are particularly good at bringing out new and surprising poems, full of unexpected surprises. A frequent contributor to The Ekphrastic Review she has work also in many journals and anthologies, including The Plague Papers, edited by Robbi Nester, and The Ekphrastic World, edited by Lorette C. Luzajic. ** Cleaning the Sepulchre No one likes to leave their dear one in a sepulchre where others have lain. Even here, in a tomb with the lid unopened. The spiritual body of the man who had rested here has risen, they say, in red rag glory. For barely two days since rioting throngs jeered around the cross and his bloody feet, for two days since the mourners were almost trampled at his sad crucifixion spectacle, the body lay here. Me, I never attend that barbarity. More important is what remains within the dark stone interiors—the stains, the stink. It is through cleaning that I get to know those who inhabited these death spaces. This man, the rumours go, raised Lazarus entombed four days to life. It was my father who cleaned that tomb after the corpse, stiff with putrefaction and swaddling, stumbled into daylight. No one talks about Lazarus’s next life, if you can call it that, after a four-day death. I know this man’s spirit through the blood congealed, the fluids expelled through the weave of the muslin. This man, once a baby also swaddled, was visited by royalty seeking him under a blazing star. Frankincense and myrrh, they brought the infant. Despite all the years, their faint medicinal scents infused the rock and rose up to me as I shoved aside the lid that he had resurrected through. Now I scrub and sluice this place. Let in the daily air. Fran Turner Fran Turner grew up on a farm in the most southerly area of Canada but fell in love with Toronto, her home. She has worked in nursing, shiatsu massage and cancer advocacy and has taught in her own Aikido dojo. New to writing, her short fiction has appeared in Dodging the Rain and Adelaide Magazine. She loves experimenting with flash fiction. ** Dear Great Spirit, I don’t know who or what you are, but still I need guidance from time to time, and you are the one I pray to. Is it really prayer, though, if I don’t think of you as either god or angel? If my words are not holy or sacred, but ordinary questions to which I have no answers, or ordinary dilemmas I can’t seem to solve? And if, really, it’s your mother I picture, not you, holding my hand? Your spirit is not far away in a luminous heaven, but a presence, always all around me—neither gentle nor severe--listening, observing from everywhere to everything. Your spirit does not judge the importance of my concerns, even though my life is tangled up in trivia. And if my words result in nothing else, I can feel them being absorbed by the waves of energy that make up the universe, becoming part of it—acknowledged, heard, transformed, made real. I neither serve nor worship you, but remain instead, in continued chaos, Your Mirror Kerfe Roig A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/ ** The Art of Reverence Impossible to disbelieve, You're seen by three of four as Son the Father chose to grieve and resurrect for more... ...in death than in the trodden dust where fear by faith was quelled as signs performed became the trust in minds that had beheld... ...and in the minds Your message swayed by parables retold and by example You conveyed as moral shield to hold... ...against the danger things possessed become to transient soul in time so brief to be addressed comprising earthly role... ...and in the eyes of turning face at well of water drawn where ethnic fear dismissed the Grace they dared not look upon... ...yet felt in misting moist surprise the thirst that You had quenched of soul so parched from hate's despise You left in kindness drenched... ...and in the eyes that faced afraid the consequence of sin and those with stones to be conveyed by hands unjust within... ...who lived to hear "Go home, repent and be with God alone becoming message I have sent by guilt that you atone"... ...and in the eyes that gave though poor the most that they could give content with having little more than Grace in which to live... ...and in the eyes of those You spurned with guilt beheld in hand at temple tables overturned to have them understand... ...and in the eyes whose hands were laid for silver pieces gained assuring You were thus betrayed to captors and restrained... ...and in the chants of "Crucify!" from those You would forgive for homage paid to rule of lie as will by which to live... ...and in the eyes that had to see the holes that nails had made and where the wound would have to be from pierce of torture's blade... ...as doubt became by trembling touch the Hope though never seen that countless hearts would have to clutch on which their souls could lean... ...and in the voice that thrice denied the kingdom of Your name, and yet would be the stone implied of churches we became... ...that letters would immortalize as risen body seen becoming apostolic soul Your death would reconvene... ...where art would later render views that sacrifice would bind to Grace of peace You left to choose in eyes no longer blind... ...to Light, opposing shadows cast, becoming evil's bane as Truth by hallowed vestige passed denial would profane. Portly Bard Portly Bard: Old man. Ekphrastic fan. Prefers to craft with sole intent of verse becoming complement... ...and by such homage being lent... ideally also compliment. ** Resurrected Not closed in by a boulder in a cave, but from a closed coffin of elm, He rises. We condemned him, Killed him, for refusing to go to battle. A coward who cared not to fight for his homeland to maintain power and hoard the riches of the world. We were the ones willing: To risk our lives. To follow orders. To be the heroes. To be the martyrs. While we lie on the battlefield of the blood red sky, our bodies ripped open and shredded with wounds of war and Unhealed wounds of Hell haunting us for eternity for those lives we destroyed so violently, in a blood-thirsty trance; Snatching them From the Earth. From God. For what? We don’t remember… This man shines with Blood on his Hands Feet and Gushing from his side. We are Astonished. Amazed Afraid. Ashamed. What’s this? He calls to us, “Do not be afraid For I am with you Always” “Rise up And Believe In the Power Of Forgivness And Eternal Peace.” “My peace I give you.” “Life everlasting Can be yours If only You forgive Others And Yourselves.” “And serve the world As Creators of Peace.” We gape in Awe. Yes. The sun begins to rise. Our breath returns. And we now Believe. Our blood now shining; Resurrected. Lisa Molina While not bingeing on her new favourite writer’s works, Lisa Molina can be found working with students with special needs, writing, singing, playing the piano, or marveling at nature with her family. She has lived in Austin, Texas since earning her BFA at the University of Texas. Her poetry can be found in several literary journals, including The Ekphrastic Review, Beyond Words Magazine, Trouvaille Review, Ancient Paths Literary Journal, Down in the Dirt, and soon to be featured in Amethyst Review and Peeking Cat. ** Anastasis The disciples desperate. The redeemer dead. Israel lost. They had been mistaken. How they’d fallen for his lie. Jesus, the Messiah. They felt cheated and abandoned. But he'd told them he would return. He'd told them that he was the redeemer of souls not nations. On the road to Emmaus they accepted, shaking, that he was back in flesh and blood. He even asked Thomas to put his hand in his wounds. Women had returned from Jesus’ tomb, found it empty. The body gone. There were rumours. "The disciples came while we were asleep and took the body." His benefactor, Joseph of Arimathea, had been responsible for the burial; some said he healed his badly broken body. There’d been a pulse. Scholars don’t agree about the timing. “Expressions like ‘three days’ and ‘40 days’ are imprecise in the Bible,” Borg said. For the evangelists, “three days” means “a short period of time.” In this fourteenth century painting an emaciated Jesus floats over an impossible coffin. The wounds clearly marked in red. Red repeated as a visual reminder of spilled blood. One depiction of a story told to us for over 2000 years. Some try and count the days, years. Others will believe we’ll rise again one day in all our misery, pain, flesh, and bone. Then there are those who take the story and move it in their heart. We can be sure of only one truth: let your old self die. The new you is waiting. Rose Mary Boehm A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels, one full-length poetry collection and two chapbooks, her work has been widely published in mostly US poetry journals. Her latest full-length poetry MS, The Rain Girl, has been published by Chaffinch Press in August 2020. Read more: https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/ ** Crowned The king is dead! Long live the king! The crown of thorns, the cut to the heart in the end there was no end. Lynn White Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Vagabond Press, Gyroscope Review and So It Goes Journal. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com///www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/ ** Swallows After I found my mother Easter Sunday; after she had attempted suicide with sleeping pills; after I saw the humpbacked gibbous moon in the purple night sky; after cliff swallows built mud nests; pigtailed ten year old, war refugee from Budapest; after I prayed, fearing my mother would die; after I washed the concrete kitchen floor with water, painted cerulean the chairs; after the red brick house was separated by steel doors, foundation with a roofless hall, steep staircases; after yellow forsythia, pussy willows grew in a bomb crater: after everything, we stood there, you ask: Why do you write about swallows and mud nests? Ilona Martonfi Ilona Martonfi is a poet, editor, curator, advocate and activist. Author of four poetry books, the most recent collection is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022). Writes in journals, anthologies, and seven chapbooks. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Founder and Curator of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award. ** Resurrection for the Non-Believer Religion best serves the believer Education, memorize books of the bible Sit up straight, listen to the sermon; bow your head Understanding of God alludes conscious thought Resurrection of Jesus defies death Rebirth – born again of spirit, of body Evangelists boast all-knowing paths to salvation Celebration of Easter, Christ- not a chocolate bunny The Easter bonnet I wore as a child lays crushed in a box I resist blind faith; I’m from Missouri – show me Overhead, helicopter egg-drop entices children Non-believers resurrection; Mother Earth renews life Julie A. Dickson Julie A. Dickson is a semi-retired home health worker, assisting elderly with telling their stories and providing companionship. Her poetry reflects experience in aging, teen issues, bullying, nature and environment. Publications including Poetry Quarterly, The Avocet, Page & Spine and the Harvard Press have supported her work. Full length books are available on Amazon. Dickson spends her free time writing near water and reading aloud to her two rescued feral cats. ** Death Defeated Hired to guard the tomb of one who had lost the battle to remain alive soldiers fall, amazed, terrified, when the granite slab pressed down hard, sealed, proves useless to contain him. They saw him dead, broken, helped push the slab over Him, yet with the dawn this Christ emerged. Do not the dead stay dead? Is not this the ultimate battle that all will lose? Yet this man rose above his grave, defeated death. On their vigil they witness His rising, a feat beyond all understanding. They find no comfort in his raised hand of peace-- peace is not their ken, death is their profession. Amazed and terrified, they note where blood had flowed from flesh torn by thorn, nails, sword a red, red robe now covered Him. He is a new soldier in a war they could never win-- He battled and defeated death itself. His armor, a golden halo His lance a golden light, of love, of peace, of everlasting life. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage, and yes, she is a believer in the defeat of death by Christ on behalf of all of us. Her poems often feature hope, love, food, family , and strong women. ** He Shattered the Box My God doesn’t live in a box. A grave could not hold Him. My God can spill blood and still live. My God can take pain, and mold it into beauty. My God can step on water, tread the snake head, command the wind. Even government officials were astounded. Religious people harbored jealousy. But you and I, commoners really, delighted in His coming…. and His overcoming. My God shattered the box of my past into dust and tiny shards. My God knew my name…. and still invited me to follow. I don’t fall prostrate on cold stone to kiss His grave. He is not there. My God… Diana Newquist Parson Diana Newquist Parson is a retired teacher, who enjoys sleeping late, blogging sporadically at https://glorybug.wordpress.com/, and traveling with her husband. She is mother of one, grandmother of three, and has no living pets. She sometimes walks around, talking to herself as she tries out the sound of words, and she has been published a few times. Diana doesn’t know how to swim, is a mediocre cook, and hates to dust. Otherwise she is fairly normal. ** The Resurrection Jesus stands tall, halo shining, the holes from the nails the Romans pounded into his hands and feet, bleed onto the coffin he rises from. The Romans surrounding him, kneel, begging for forgiveness. “Forgive me, for I know not what I do,” the soldier before him says. Jesus gently touches the soldier’s head. “You are forgiven, my son. Go and spread the word that I have risen.” The other soldiers stunned at the sight of this man who is supposed to be dead, stare at him astounded. Not knowing what to do, they follow their fellow Roman. The red and white robes that Jesus died in, slightly slide down his shoulder as he steps from the coffin and slowly walks into the sunlight to greet his disciples waiting for his return. Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher Lisa M. Scuderi-Burkimsher has been writing since 2010 and has had many micro-flash fiction stories published. In 2018 her book Shorts for the Short Story Enthusiasts, was published and The Importance of Being Short, in 2019. She currently resides on Long Island, New York with her husband Richard and dogs Lucy and Breanna. ** Rising It is a red sky, bloody red; derived from it, the mantle wraps the divine sense in scarlet, underlined with palm green; the stars are gold made – their hue – quarried from his halo; the Golgotha rocks are muted dark – theirs is a ghostly deathly mark. He cancelled it and has risen from it: stepping over its obsolete lid, bestowing blessing, cross in hand, and taking that larger-than-life gait that only a novice toddler does and a god on the rise. The artist, the master of Trebon, must have yearned badly for benediction as he placed the divine on his own focal point, unlike others where he stirs up, dashes above, or stands jubilant on the high grave plinth. This rising, so down to earth, let the painter’s pained heart leap symmetrically upfront into Jesus’ open wound imparting, thus, the mortal love on the proper perspective; he – remaining on this pivotal spot with his live reddening brush . Ekaterina Dukas Ekaterina Dimitrova lives in London. She uses the publication name Ekaterina Dukas. A graduate in Philology and Philosophy, she is interested in the history of arts, ideas, culture and universalism, going back to Sanskrit sources. Considering poetry as man’s alter ego, she is an avid explorer of the metric word. Former educationist, she is now a volunteer at Victoria and Albert museum and at The British Museum for the interactive program Hands On. Her poems have recently appeared on The Ekphrastic Review and Poetrywivenhoe. Previously, her research on the medieval manuscript The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander was published by The British Library and subsequently awarded by questia digital library a position 9 in one of their periodical selections 16 of the best publications on illuminated manuscripts. ** Remembering Up in the blue a flock of rosy sheep moves to and fro across celestial fields, chased by the breezes, climbs atop the steep- sided sky-dome. Today the welkin yields such riches, such profound abundant peace – nothing exists but goodness. Why recall a yester day, on which the sun did cease, the sacrificial hour, when over all the world light turned to night? So, I forget the crucifixion darkness and—a fool-- assert my claim to Heaven. I regret not my transgressions, care not for the cool once hot with His blood slopes of Calvary – I am so lost, dear God, help me…help me. Sasha A. Palmer Sasha A. Palmer is a Russian-born award-winning poet and translator, who currently lives in Baltimore, MD. Sasha’s poetry, translations and essays appeared in Writer’s Digest, Slovo/Word, Cardinal Points and elsewhere. Sasha has a thing for the word “amateur” and tries to follow the motto she has created: Live for the Love of it. Visit Sasha at www.sashaapalmer.com ** Anastasis, Longing For Parousia I had been there by the cross I felt His departure After waiting a lifetime I wept with the others. After 3 days, 3 nights I witnessed the stone roll I experienced His resurrection. Hallelujah! I looked up to touch Blood trickled from His wounds I saw Him walk free. I believed what I saw. I listened as He spoke I hung on every word Watched as He forgave I heard Him proffer eternal life. I long for His parousia And know the day will come. Alun Robert Alun Robert is a prolific creator of lyrical free verse. He has achieved success in poetry competitions across the British Isles and North America. His work has been published by many literary magazines, anthologies and webzines in the UK, Ireland, Italy, India, South Africa, Kenya, USA and Canada. Since 2018, he has been part of The Ekphrastic Review community particularly enjoying the fortnightly challenges. He is a member of the Federation of Writers Scotland for whom he was a Featured Writer in 2019. ** Trebon Altarpiece : Resurrection The men are always sleeping. In the garden even your beloved disciples bewildered, fearful, frightened, golden halos too heavy for mere mortals whose silvery beards droop on to dusty cloaks and chest to sleep. After the worst when it is finished the thin, punctured body rises too light to lift the tomb's heavy rings and lid, He stands there, guards tumbled, their weapons useless in the holy glow as if Jesus were only a whisper of an idea a holy airborne murmur towards something more. The heavenly breeze lifts his proud standard where your conscience should follow where He will soon hear the chorus of angels, Not sink down past the useless scabbards of feckless guards, lodge in the loamy leaden earth beneath the gold raiment of the stars above. Lucie Payne Lucie Payne is a retired librarian who has spent the past 25 years encouraging others to write and is now taking her own advice and writing as much as she can. ** la modone noire: The Black Madonna "She guides through darkness to transformation." The Story of The Black Madonna There would be no regrets: he had climbed the 216 steps to see Our Lady, to thank whatever act of love had kept his hands supple in old age -- he thanked the spring weather for the rain to green the fields for sheep, for sheep fat from their bodies to rub on his weathering fingers; to bless the stars that came out like a floating halo for Our Lady before he climbed into his cot-like bed moved, in winter, near the fire, the cold less when he pulled a thick woolen blanket over a body so changed from his youth he was surprised how youth came back when he took up his tools at dawn, and watched Our Lady grow from wood surrounded by sheep's tallow candles. After his breath put out the candle's fire he touched the frazzled wicks and rubbed the soot against the robes to see if wood grain would show through, all this before her face -- the small, appropriate smile and the infant -- no more than a knob of wood until his nature was defines although it was clear he was cherished tucked against his mother's body. Who would think of them he wondered, if the straw mattess was burned, the room emptied of life when he went back to Toulouse? The wind whispered as he annointed her with black residue gathered when the candles whispered, sputtered and slept; and he was sure he heard her whisper as he dreamed her story, dreaming her into a life where he, mortal, had to leave her, eternal in art protected by a new moon, an omen painted in gold and hidden in the folds of her robe. * 1986 We had driven through the Loire Valley and pulled off the road when we saw a sign for an underground-level village inhabited by the Troglodytes. In light coming from an opening in the "roof" of a cave-like setting, a photography of a woman with white hair was illuminated, set up on an easel so tourists could see her as she'd been in the past, with a spinning wheel, spinning yarn. From her image in the Loire, we went on to Perigord, where we passed a fabricated figure held against a cliff with ropes -- a perpetual rock climber -- before we reached an informal museum with a room full of sculptures. One, a Lamb, held a golden cross in the crook of his front leg, raised to hold a sign of Christ. I had seen the Lamb before, among the symbols of the Masonic Order; and years later, his image had flown down from the ceiling in my bedroom, a waking dream at Easter, 2003, two days before my second grandson (named, appropriately, Gabriel) was born. I'd come to love the image of "a little lamb" in William Blake's "Songs of Innocence" (1789) an expression of God's will and the beauty of God's creation as it was expressed by a visionary poet whose writing marked the beginning of The Romantic Movement, a literary movement that gathered the emotional and esthetic parts of art as they were found in nature. In Perigord, we entered a "department" in France known for truffles -- and truffle pigs. The pig, it should be noted, is a symbol of The Great Mother, Queen of the cosmos, in Egyptian mythology In Perigord, truffle pigs can locate succulent truffles, fruit bodies that are a delicacy to enhance the flavor of French cuisine, scenting them as they grow, sometimes three feet underground. Above ground, after driving through the same enthralling rock landscape we were to find in Rocamadour, we came to a small museum in Perigord where the "little lamb" was displayed, surrounded by other sculptures, as if he, and the other works of art, had been stored there without identification for future reference: what artisan had made the lamb so our family would find him, a work of art, not grazing fields in France? Sheep and lambs are seasonal -- transhumant -- scampering up formidable cliffs to reach spring pastures. In Rocamadour, a town built on limestone cliffs, the Black Madonna sits in a hollow of natural stone (or at least she did when we found her), her dark face and robes accentuated by the streaked whiteness of natural limestone, pale gray and cream, veins in rock reminiscent of grains in wood; nature's mark as trees grow, bent by the winds of The Mistral farther south, and stone from the water-bed of the Dordogne River, thrust up- ward to create a landscape for a woman who was not historically validated. Was it she who stepped out from a boat in southern France bringing the mystery of legend? And with it, a sorrow she hadn't wanted, to hear Christ's words, meant to prepare her for life without him, calling on her to be strong in her belief, guided by her intuition of the deeper meaning for his words, do not cling to me. *
P. S. I wish we could all be Children of the King -- Czeslaw Milosz, "Elegy For Y.Z." I could tell you we found a 14th century workshop, historically preserved as it was built and hidden at the bottom of limestone cliffs -- rocks with pockets of foliage -- craggy hillsides in a landscape similar to the topography illuminated in medieval Persian manuscripts where figures are pictured wearing the colors of sun and sea as they climb upward in ancient illustrations; yet how different they are from the wood sculptor, his character more like someone in a child's story with Geppetto creating Pinocchio in a world where everyone lies to protect the family secrets, how the carver's hand interprets the truth of pilgrims as they climb 216 steps to reach The Black Madonna; and how a stone sculptor's hand carves Chinamen as they climb a blue mountain in art with the individual characteristics of nature -- its perfection an imperfection -- success and hardship -- a journey patterned by shades of blueness -- empyrean tones in Yeats' late-in-life poem, Lapis Lazuli... How blue was the twilight when a woman who would be called The Black Madonna, her identity hidden in the iconography of gravestones -- encoded and enigmatic -- tried to gather her deep blue cloak around her to cover any discrepancies in the personal details of her journey; how she never met a craftsman or a boatman who listened to her description of an artist, The Trebon Master a man who painted an altarpiece with Christ who came back from the dead in Bohemia; and when he came to life in spirit, he traveled with her, even as the essence of his renewal would come for centuries -- unchanging and ever-changing in nature -- a guide through wars and oppression and the promise of love stories ancient and modern, deconstructed in abstract shapes in a world rebuilt with art and passion. Laurie Newendorp Laurie Newendorp's recent book, When Dreams Were Poems, 2020, explores the relationship of art and poetry as it is repeated in differing time periods. Persian poetry was first illustrated with illuminated pages in the 14th century, the same century when the Trebon Master was creating his altarpiece in Czechoslovakia. The Byzantine Black Madonna, brought to a monastery in Czestochowa in the 14th century, is Poland's holiest and most important relic. The French Black Madonnas, including the 12th century Dordogne Black Madonna in Rocamadour, are related to Mary Magdalene in southern France where clues of her migration after Christ's Crucifixion are encoded in burial iconography. ** Heretic Hymn: Easter The sky still storms long after you first think of rising at nine a.m. Night is still the ex-lover who keeps returning, leaving her black dress in the doorway. Wind blows the trashcans over, street littered now with the bones of dead prophets. Your therapist calls by ten because you haven’t and can’t go there. ‘It’s not enough to rise.’ You nod. Pause. The voice on the other end asks if you’re there and you don’t quite know the answer. Fact is you don’t want to talk in front of witnesses – it’s all blood and alcohol. Then again, Night knows. You rise. Crack a window. The earth is giving off messages: dust kicked up by the rain, a skunk that passed through in the dark, rain’s splashes pushing up from the walk. Now the other end of the line’s gone silent. You tell him about Night; they’re already acquainted. Everything rises. Even the things you hated just moments ago. Let them, says a voice that sounds like yours, lifting, and you – lighter now. D.A. Gray D.A. Gray is the author of Contested Terrain (FutureCycle Press, 2017) and Overwatch (Grey Sparrow Press, 2011). His poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Comstock Review, Still: The Journal and Wrath-Bearing Tree among others. He holds Masters Degrees from The Sewanee School of Letters and Texas A&M-Central Texas. A veteran, Gray now teaches, writes, and lives in Central Texas.  The Old Arrow Maker, by Edmonia Lewis (USA) 1866-1872 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is The Old Arrow Maker, by Edmonia Lewis. Deadline is April 16, 2021 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include LEWIS WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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 piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. 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. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, April 16, 2021. 9. 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. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!  Composition, by Sophie Taeuber Arp (Switzerland) 1931 Dear Readers and Writers, Once again, we have a stunning collection of literary pieces considering an artwork from many perspectives. We had a lot of submissions for this work. Writing about an artwork that is not traditionally pictorial is both challenging and liberating. It can take some imagination to find the story, but on the other hand, the direction is not limited by the suggestions of the artist. Again, we thank every single person who joins us. You are part of something amazing! Every two weeks, we come together, apart, from different places and spaces in the world, contemplating a painting. Then we share our words. The Ekphrastic Review is honoured to be the vessel that reveals your words to each other and to the world. Whether or not your work was chosen to post, you have created something new, inspired by someone else's creation. This is no small thing. It is mightily symbolic of the power of creativity, imagination, and communication. We honour the artists before us by giving careful contemplation to their work. And we discover their stories, their culture, their world, while thinking through and expressing something of ours. I cannot thank you all enough for being part of this incredible community. love, Lorette ** Sophie Composing rolling playful circles through your life’s lines your art bounces with passion, with rhythm, your body’s quick beat taps out geometry; triangles, polygons, spheres constructed with precision, your shapes, skilfully balanced, in harmony you tame your palette, paint those spaces that seem so simple yet animate a canvas that drips pure razzmatazz, joy and impro as you orbit the cosmos inside Sophie’s cabaret where art is jazz dance Dorothy Burrows Based in the United Kingdom, Dorothy Burrows enjoys writing poems, flash fiction and short plays. Over the past year, her poems have appeared on various websites including The Ekphrastic Review. A new poem is forthcoming in Spelt Magazine and another in The Alchemy Spoon. ** Composition Four quadrants, Off-kilter, Like a silver screen set, shot For an unbalanced mind. Two topsy-turvy squares Bounce off axis edges Imperfect as DVD screensaver logos. The only order lies with the jouster, One circle mounted on another, Lance tilted towards Some offscreen enemy, Or either a cross spotlit By blue gray colour gels, Markers indicating the saviour And those who mourned him, Or two pies, One quartered, The other halved, Both whole and wholly capturing The I. Ian Evans Ian Evans is a writer and teacher with his B.A. in English and an Ed.M. in Secondary English Education. He is co-author of "The Mechanic," a graphic poem, and his poetry has appeared previously in The Ekphrastic Review. He lives in Highland Park, New Jersey, with his wife, who is also a writer and teacher. ** Her Patterns Emerge by Chance the canvas has no smell or taste the kitchen, a blank a hallucination I see the point where four tiles join in solidity and silence I feel the oxygen in her blood disappearing suffocated from the inside out what’s the damage to her cosmic metaphor, her subversive abstraction the way she danced in the kitchen and at Cabaret Voltaire the plasticity of her transition into red, grey, black ping pictures a synthesis of decomposition an incorrectly operated stove and her friends cut with the kitchen knife Dada slide like a yellow line through the blue like carbon monoxide a conduit into an obscure and awkward dance, polychromal chance the leftover trace of a strange premonition which has no smell or taste Lydia Trethewey Lydia Trethewey is an artist and writer from Perth, Western Australia. She is currently undertaking a PhD in poetry at Curtin University, exploring experiences of nascent queerness through expanded forms of ekphrasis. She works as a sessional academic teaching art history and theory at Curtin University, where she also received her PhD in fine art. She has exhibited her art in Australia, China and Spain. Her poetry has been published in Australia and the United States. ** Life's Juxtaposition of Composition Life's juxtaposition A lack of alignment Sometimes we move in concentric circles Following circadian rhythm Or randomly staking position; Do we strive to find common ground Security in similarity Or defined by individuality? Free radicles are we who find our way Through choice; I trace the rainbow through the rain, The drops which slip with random lines Down the glass; I move through rooms like chess in play; I compose a thought And find my path. Ruth Partridge Ruth Partridge: "In my first year of writing poetry, I have simply been impressed by the response from people who have encouraged and wanted to read it. I am a primary school teacher – the English lead in a large primary school in South Devon, England During lockdown I turned to running the local lanes and found myself immersed in nature. I started to Blog – wwwrunningintheslowlanelife.com , and quickly found inspiration from reading the poetry of others and turned to crafting my own . I have recently turned to self -publishing my first book – Running in the Slow Lane- an anthology available on Amazon." ** The Path Home Outside my window, the sun and moon are next to each other in the sky. The light fills with shadow. I am on the ground, praying. The man outside is bleeding. The man outside is being mocked. A storm is brewing, the wind shakes my house. Everyone runs back home. Everyone is afraid of their mistake. The man mutters something to the clouds. His body goes limp. His mother weeps, throws fistfuls of dirt. It is Sunday, and the birds are singing. The neighbourhood whispers of death. The neighbourhood whispers of rebirth. I have come to the river, where others are lining up. I have come to the river to fall back into the water. Kerri Vasilakos Kerri Vasilakos is a writer from Long Island, New York who is currently living in Georgia. She earned her BA in English- Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and has had her poems featured in their Creative Writing Clubs Newsletters. Kerri also owns a spiritual counseling business with her fiancé that focuses on holistic healing and energy work. She has a deep faith, and a passion for guiding others along their healing journey. Kerri is also a gifted artist and a cat lover. Her poems have been featured in the Penman Review. ** A New Day Clap, clap, clap. The sky is ablaze with lighted hands clapping. An equal number of feet join the dance and there is no need for radio or television. Covid19 seems trapped in some bubbles and squares or rectangles. Everywhere else calm seems to be prevailing. I finally wear my gold sheer stilettoes, a sweater dress in red, hold a clutch in gold, red gloss on my lips, and go out. I see cubes driving cars and cars are circles. Buildings are thin and straight into the clouds, and grass is grown on thin lengths of reeds. Many hued shops and neon signs gesture with a forefinger pointing at us from restaurant tops. Rest is hidden, cut by huge scissors that hang from the sky. I see myself and you as two tiny shadows between the ridges and ache to touch. The music is loud, and you are not there in flesh to dance with me. I am alone in all the circles and keep swirling like dervishes in a trance that seems to go on forever. I run helter-skelter, opening all the doors till I see my bed all neat and ready. I don’t waste time and let no haunts visit my dreams either. Next morning is fresh like a newly plucked orange and as I sip the juice, the phone rings. “Corona took him.” Residue of the second shot in my arm hurts but it’s a new day. Anita Nahal Anita Nahal, Ph.D., CDP is a poet, professor, short story writer, flash fictionist, and children’s writer. She teaches at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C. Besides academic publications, her creative books include, two volumes of poetry, a collection of flash fictions, four children’s books and three edited anthologies. Her third book of poetry is scheduled for release in December 2021 by Kelsay Books. Her poems and stories can be found in national and international journals in the US, Uk, Asia and Australia. Nahal’s poems are also housed at Stanford University’s Digital Humanities initiative, and she is also a columnist and guest contributing editor for New York based Aaduna. Two books of Nahal's are prescribed on university syllabus at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Nahal is the daughter of Indian novelist and professor, Late Dr. Chaman Nahal, and educationist mother, Late Dr. Sudarshna Nahal. Originally from New Delhi, India, Anita Nahal resides in the US. Her family include her son, daughter-in-law and their golden doodle. For more on Anita: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitanahal ** Rumination The equilibrium of life is skewed. Unsettled by a miasma of doubt, misgiving. Sisyphus’ stone doubled, gravity a raconteur of woe. Midnight blue existential overload. Parallel lives stray from their course, perpendicular moments behold delayed denouement. Who knew the deconstruction of disenchantment to be an art? The spheres fallen from the heavens chiming their discord. All the while I long for soft embellishments, curved interludes of meaning, colour unyielding to the precision of cynicism. I yearn for worlds that have long rolled past. Asymmetrical freehand wonder. Points of intersection not entirely linear. Siobhán Mc Laughlin Siobhán is a poet from Co. Donegal in Ireland. Her poems have been published before in The Ekphrastic Review, including some Ekphrastic challenges, as well as literary journals online including The Honest Ulsterman, Quince Magazine, Drawn to the Light Press, The Poetry Village, The Trouvaille Review and forthcoming in Bealtaine magazine. She blogs about writing at: www.a-blog-of-ones-own.blogspot.com and is currently looking forward to partaking in the NaPoWriMo Challenge for the month of April. ** But What Does It Mean, Sophie? To have a name that means wisdom and knowledge, and To live in an era when wisdom was kicked front and back by the bootheels of two irrational wars, and To earn your supper selling handcrafted drawstring purses, though you’ve authored a textbook , edited a magazine, and been the founding faculty member of an art department, and To be remembered best for a Dadaist head shaped like a hatmaker’s block, the way Georgia O’Keeffe is remembered best for paintings of flowers, and To pose for a photograph holding the bowling-pin face of your sculpture in front of your cheery smile, so your left iris is hidden behind its painted mouth, which holds not a tongue but a watchful eye, and To remember your father’s life veering away from you like Haley’s Comet, ending as your life began, leaving five children orphaned when he died of TB, almost before you were old enough to walk, and To choose for your canvases the shapes of pill tablets, chemistry beakers, test tubes, while calling them studies of “Circles” and “Personnages” – you, a pharmacist’s daughter, and To be the life partner of an artist lionized for his organic forms, while pursuing your own increasingly geometric vision, and To be invited to decorate the interior of a public arts center, then have your work covered over because the public couldn’t accept the architect’s choice of a modern, Mondrian-inspired aesthetic, and To weave tactile tapestries with delicious, saturated melon colours and thick, wooly fibers, featuring patterns of hyperbolas, the double-Ess motif of waistbands and hourglasses, and To sketch swirling, curlicued serifs, to cut them out and layer them, like peek-a-boo stacks of calligraphy, or Burmester curves – those elegant drafting tools indispensable to both couturiers and engineers, and To title these works “Design” and “Shell,” and To live in the same Germany, at the same time, as the esteemed mathematician Emmy Noether, colleague of Hilbert, praised by Einstein, creator of theorems indispensable to quantum mechanics, who nonetheless, being female, was denied a salary for the first decade of her teaching career, and To build marionettes for a puppet play – an eight-armed robot soldier with a tank-turret head, gold-antlered King Stag -- and to give the king’s retinue of pantalooned clowns feet like a pig’s or a horse’s hooves, made of amputated cones, and To speak a language in which style rhymes with distill, frustum rhymes with frustration, and your patronymic could be taken as a pun for “deaf,” or for “dove” – and To forgo signing your artwork most of your career, and To laugh anyway, to dance anyway, to dress like Nijinsky did in Diaghilev’s ballets, to dare to love, to be enthusiastic, to ceaselessly explore, and To save your most private thoughts – perhaps – for your work, writing them in the language of Euclid and Pythagoras, of Newton and Hypatia, a language that requires no translator, only an alert and open mind; and To know that your secret message – dynamic as a unicyclist, balanced as an equation, precarious as the past, and thrilling as your uncertain future – can wait for as long as it takes, until a reader arrives who can recognize it. K. Roberts K Roberts is a non-fiction writer who also trained in art and design. ** Off to Join the Circus Geometry is fun! says my already most hated teacher of the year. What a waste – a nerd who looks like he majored in modelling. Now what? He’s passing out plastic bags filled with geometric shapes cut from construction paper, felt markers, and a glue stick. What is this? Kindergarten? Tonight you’re going to play with lines, curves, angles, and shapes. Move things around. Cut things apart. Experiment. Please, please, go beyond snowmen, beach balls, and houses. Surprise yourselves! There will be prizes for thinking outside of the square! I’m so NOT going to love geometry, but at least I like art. Maybe I can impress Mr. Looks enough to be lenient when we get to the hard stuff. But, by the time I get home, I’m too tired even for a snack. I drop on the sofa and nap. Now I’m walking the high wire at a circus. I look down, down, down at the tiny people pointing at me. I smile like I know what I’m doing. No worries! (That’s how I know I’m dreaming.) By the time I wake, my art’s creating itself. Viewers look up at the tent top, see me practically rolling down the tightrope that slopes downhill. I counterbalance by leaning back. My balance pole is more a cross – the one I have to bear. The red shape angled below me is a foam ramp. Clowns wheel it along to catch me should I fall. The pointy black thing? That’s the fear I’m facing down. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. For Alarie, looking at art is the surest way to inspire a poem, so she’s made The Ekphrastic Review home. (She confesses she was once a math nerd, too,) Alarie was honoured to receive one of the Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards for 2020. She hopes you’ll check out her poetry books on the Ekphrastic Book Shelf and visit her at alariepoet.com. ** Cross Hairs Geometric, angular, circular, sallow gray, Democrat blue, death black, blood red, blue caught in cross hairs blue is the head gray the body red the blood the black of the limo lighter gray surrounding all, open air, open car November twenty-two 1963, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, cross hairs to the head hair trigger blackness of death: Prophecy. Stephen Poole Stephen Poole served for 31 years in the Metropolitan Police in London, England. As a freelance journalist, he has written for a variety of British county and national magazines. Passionate about poetry since boyhood, his poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry on the Lake, LPP Magazine, and two anthologies. ** Sophie Taeuber Arp Artist extraordinaire’, Switzerland’s Sophie Taeuber was raised in her mother’s Bed and breakfast, after the untimely death of her pharmacist father Confined to his room no longer, his daughter wept while removing the colourful drawings Daddy loved, she moved on to art school in time for the Dada movement, an anti- Establishment idea rebuking WWII- a slaughter in trenches while the world kept turning Formal instruction at St. Gallen meant learning how to break rules, utilizing art as a weapon, Galvanizing artists hands as a means of insurrection, a protest with brush strokes Hans Arp, poet and sculptor, was first her collaborator, then her husband. They Inspired one another, delving into Cubism, Constructionism, and the Avant-garde, Juxtaposing different techniques, they were the ultimate coupler, encouraging Knowledge and exploration of artistic expression, challenging one another to Lean towards the unexplored, the depths of the soul, to bring forward Mastery of the self, to express the universal struggle of all mankind Never one to limit her reach, Taeuber-Arp danced to her own tune, Orchestrating a life of teaching, starring as a (masked) chanteuse in the Cabaret Voltaire Paris in the 20’s was tailor-made for her unconventional spirit, and Sophie bucked Quotidian ideas of womanhood in the early 1900’s, a person of true Renaissance, she defied being put in a box, crafting beaded purses and Spectral choreography with equal passion and fervor, her art was both Transcending and urbane, encompassing traditional lines in new ways Until her untimely death at age fifty-three, she continued to exhibit Verve and ebullient energy in her art and her life, never Wasting a chance to expand her visionary exploration, refusing the Xenic moral codes set for females of the time, forestalling fame in her hometown, Zurich, until her portrait was chosen to posthumously grace the 50 Swiss Franc note. Debbie Walker-Lass Debbie Walker-Lass lives and writes in North Decatur, Georgia. ** Shapes Speak to Me From the Canvas I listen to the canvas before me: Jostling for position to speak directly to me, these shapes spoke to me. Each told a slightly different tale and I do not know which is true. I have accepted each, all into my heart. Judging among them is left to you. Black triangle on the side: Together we will make a house with a grand triangular front. Sun, a blue round ball, will smiled and shine on us, its blue(with gray shadow) means cool calm of winter skies without storm, not the intense yellow of summer. There will be heat but not enough to melt the snow that fills and whitens the flat lots all around our house, separated into lots by thin black fences, waiting for us to venture out into the world, wearing our green skies, stopping now and then with an x where we’ve marked the spot with their x. Gray ball speaks: With an engineer’s precision, we are laid out here to no special purpose, a still life of shapes, culled from a child’s pile of shape and color blocks. Taken straight from the toybox by the child, she has laid out upon the tile floor and now pleased with that effort called the artist to depict what she has made. I see this child will not take the path of frilly dresses and doll’s tea parties that others might see for her. I think she will be an engineer. I am her favorite block, me, the simple gray. She says I shine and reflect the light. The artist makes a picture out of her creation and she smiles. Red box, partly seen: I shake my head and wonder why they see such fancies in our pattern. Let me tell you what you see before you. “The practice ground is deserted now. All that’s left is their equipment, no time to put it away before they must be at their desks. The balls, blocks, the sticks and poles, the odd box like myself that is supposed to hold the balls and sticks we are all here, scattered about where we were when the last horn sounded. Sports now stilled, the children at desks are yearning to play again. Perhaps they left it all out for after school when we plain shapes will take up our roles in wild play of suns gone mad, of battles, balls, and fierce struggles for the crown. When those little heads now bowed over lessons of mathematics and geography will burst out of those sterile rooms on churning legs, they will pick we objects up and breathe us into life again. To the artist from me, the observer: Were these bits of fruit in a still life I would think we had a scene of life as it once was—alas , Sophia you depict what we have today—color, shape, and style, arranged just so, but devoid of life, merely shapes, carefully put in order but with no life of their own—unless you believe one of the tales your canvas told me. Joan Leotta Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. Her poems, essays, and articles, have been published or are forthcoming in Visual Verse, Verse Virtual, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Pine Song, The Ekphrastic Review, Potato Soup, Eastern Iowa Review, Mystery Tribune, and others. She’s been a Tupelo 30/30 writer and Gilbert Chappell Fellow. Her chapbook, Languid Lusciousness with Lemon, is out from Finishing Line Press. Other poetry works available are: Nature’s Gifts is free online with Stanzaic Stylings, Dancing Under the Moon and Morning by Morning, mini-chapbooks published with Origami Press, both free, online. When not hunched over a computer or performing, she enjoys sitting at table, laughing, and talking with friends and family.Her short stories are in Mystery Tribune and other journals. She performs personal and folk tales featuring food, family, and strong women. When she is not at computer or in front of a crowd, she roams local beaches in search of seabirds to photograph and seashells to collect. ** Dada The mood was like the first day of Creation, Arp and Sophie re-inventing the world… Claire Goll You spat out your first word, wet and smooth as river stones in the pockets of the world. You tried your eyes and found only windows to look into. You noticed The panes were other planes of existence, The frame existed without its master As the perfect form of a circle: anthracite apple, Cerulean rib, a long toothed ouroboros, Two snakes made an innocent black cross to nail composition to. You noticed time is a straight line. You noticed time is a circle, bringing me back to you. Alice Watts-Jones A Welsh-speaking poet living in Canton, Alice graduated with a master’s degree from Edinburgh University and is continuing her postgraduate studies at Cardiff University. She writes about what she loves: mythology, philosophy, art, and absurdity. You can find her on Instagram @alice_wattsjones. ** Snow Leopard and Ibex for Ejaz Rahim & Lloyd Jacobs after Composition by Sophie Taeuber Arp (Switzerland), 1931 C.E. here the ink has rushed out of the nib as a famished snow leopard rushes out of her cave at the end of hibernation season to hunt an ibex or two in the himalayas. her resolve usually turns into a treat—one of a kind—for onlookers, if she has a hungry cub or two to feed, too. sometimes the nature itself is in a dire rush. so i need not to be so hard on homo sapiens for their propensity to rush things and/or rush into things. apparently. the nature and time and space aren’t always on their side either. well, as far as space is concerned, i think i can get my mind around it; but time: i am not too certain that it even exists! i think, on many instances previously, i have already scrutinized the concept of clock amply, but perhaps, i haven’t performed a comprehensive autopsy on it, thus far. the reason as to why it keeps finding its way into my verses. the last four to five verses, or sentences, if you prefer, were not intended to be a part of this composition, though. but i suppose, i decided not to get in the way of the ink and the nib and allowed myself to be devoured by this tsunami-of-letters as it flowed naturally, instead. and again, the last four words—before the last word in the last verse—weren’t necessary either. but i don’t think i should be so hard on this stylo and its storage compartment and its mistress—namely the lady nib—leading the way for the refill cartridge. if anything at all, i ought to be utterly grateful to them all for their company. after all, they have been the witnesses to many, many histories; all manner of histories—histories of man and beast alike. the only thing is: on this occasion, i was that starving leopard. but i think you have gathered that already by now. and in the rush of chase, i even forgot to properly tend to the capitals and punctuation and line breaks and paragraphs and grammar, in general, here. and it still feels as if i haven’t been able to hunt a word or two, at all. but even if i let this chase continue, i know that nature and wo/man and beast and language and pen and paper and history and all will become breathless after a very short while of chasing me. so, i think i ought not to be so hard on them all. so, i think i had better resolve to containing this rush of/for composition now for now. Saad Ali Saad Ali (b. 1980 C.E. in Okara, Pakistan) has been brought up in the UK and Pakistan. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Management from the University of Leicester, UK. He is an existential philosopher-poet. Ali has authored four books of poetry i.e. Ephemeral Echoes (AuthorHouse, 2018), Metamorphoses: Poetic Discourses (AuthorHouse, 2019), Ekphrases: Book One (AuthorHouse, 2020), and Prose Poems: Βιβλίο Άλφα (AuthorHouse, 2020). He is a regular contributor to The Ekphrastic Review. By profession, he is a Lecturer, Consultant and Trainer/Mentor. Some of his influences include: Vyasa, Homer, Ovid, Attar, Rumi, Nietzsche, and Tagore. He is fond of the Persian, Chinese, and Greek cuisines. He likes learning different languages, travelling by train, and exploring cities on foot. To learn more about his work, please visit www.saadalipoetry.com. ** Composition of Guilt we find eyes in all shapes ghosts of purpose, signals lit to fire circles that come to life at night soft prisms fall into unfinished lives we gloat, while we mock the hunger imprisoned in a grief of plenty we find shapes in all eyes pleaded for pardon, set free and fired night brings air full circle doors float on a sunswept sea lives imprisoned, soft to a close open up to break the chains, grief fuels the guilt of the world Zac Thraves Zac Thraves lives in Kent, UK and is a writer and performer. In the 2020 lockdown he created an online workshop using the magic of the arts to help come to terms with anxiety and depression; he also published a book about his own struggles, available on Amazon. Poetry has been published by Nitrogen House and Scrittura Magazine; The Ekphrastic Review, and some are on Youtube. You can follow on Twitter - @28thraves or Insta - @28zacthrav. Heroes include Chaplin, Wilde, Hays, Spielberg, Kirk and Kaufman. ** The Regard The eyes in this painting—one blue one gray—that look at me with gentle curiosity see the longing, the loneliness and all the passions. They see the seventy-three years of confusion and blundering. They see the envy and the vanity, the betrayals and the glaring failures of ordinary kindness. There is no part of my life they do not see. And yet, how extraordinary that they do not judge! How I wish these were my mother’s eyes. How I wish these were the eyes looking back at me from the mirror. Laura Ann Reed Laura Ann Reed is an emerging writer whose work has appeared in Literary North, The Singing Bowl, Sky Island Journal and Third Wednesday Journal, as well as having been anthologized in How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Storey Publishing LLC. She completed Masters' Degree programs in both the Performing Arts and Clinical Psychology and was a dancer and dance instructor in the San Francisco Bay Area before working in the capacity of Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco Headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, prior to the Trump Administration. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she currently lives with her husband in Western Washington. ** Composition Does the world consist of flat logic straight lines, squares and circles? Is black always black Can it fall in love with blue and white and give birth to a baby named blue gray or grey blue? Why do we define objects with colour and shape? An apple is red and round but it can also be as green as the blood of early leaves in March When an apple is cut into pieces it lives in the shape of petals dripping its own nectar, sweet or sour Why do I call me “I” and you “you”? Can we break the prison built of skin and bones and the illusory shelter founded on memory Listen in stillness the rhymes of tide inside of us may come from the same ocean Sha Huang Sha Huang grew up in China and received her PhD degree in the University of Iowa. Her poems appeared in more than 20 literary journals and anthologies in China and the U.S, including Verse-Virtual, Trouvaille Review, The Wild Word, and Chinese and Western Poetry (中西诗歌). She also loves creating art. Her watercolor works were exhibited in Taicang City Gallery in China and the Art House in Acworth, Georgia. She currently teaches at Kennesaw State University. ** In Their Plain Abstraction When you stepped on the landmines of my eyes I covered them with two lids and then went blind. It was the last time I saw you so I did my best not forget you. But more and more all that’s left of your face is the quadrants of a fair-skinned cartesian plane in their plain abstraction. I can only recall your two potentially habitable planets goldenly sectioned with green boulevards. The upper corner of your smile. Your scalene bangs. Serves me right because one day will come when I’ll figure out that I couldn’t really hope to solve you. Angelo "NGE" Colella Angelo "NGE" Colella lives in Italy, and writes in Italian, English, and French. He also makes collage and dadaist objects.  There is still lots of time to join us for our Bird Watching contest! Deadline is May 1.
$10 CAD for book of forty bird themed ekphrastic prompts and entry. $100 prize for poetry and $100 prize for flash fiction! Special guest judges: Poetry- Tricia Marcella Cimera Flash Fiction-Karen Schauber Click here or on bird image for details and entry.  Homesickness, by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1940 Editor's Note; Thank you to those who entered our very first flash in a flash contest on the Ides of March. The challenge was to write a flash fiction piece and submit it within 24 hours. The prompt was to find a work of art that could be interpreted as an omen, and create a story under 1000 words on that theme. I was once again bowled over by the imagination and creativity that I read while going through the entries. The Ekphrastic Review has been privileged to read and publish an array of outstanding talent, from emerging writers and world renowned authors alike. The contest generated many inventive and beautifully told stories. Truth be told, I enjoyed every single entry and it was extremely difficult to choose. Please join me in welcoming Nicole Ravas to the pages of The Ekphrastic Review, and in congratulating her on the winning story. She is our first Flash in a Flash contest winner, and takes home $100. Bravo, Nicole! Without further adieu, Nicole's story. ** Homesick The angel peers down at the moving river below. He can barely see the rippling surface through the fog, thick as the loss of memory. A sudden breeze lifts the edge of a wing. This is his chance. His feat is impossible. He can no longer see the outline under the surface. It’s been too long, and the distance is too far. He’d had a dream; a lion told him he could redeem his soul if he saved just one human. A life for a life. Was it true? How would a lion know? he asked himself, brushing away the vision. He strained to see anything in the shadowed water. He had flung himself into this river centuries ago. He’d asked to fall to Earth, to save the one he loved, a woman with flowing dark hair, and a lush smile, a body languishing on a bed. His wish was granted; he gained feet and flesh. Sitting next to her ancient bed, the air sulphuric, watching her pull in a last ragged breath that barely exhaled, left a pain so sharp that eternity lost meaning. He ran shoeless to this bridge, barely breathing, and plunged. He could have raised himself to the surface, fought for air, but he needed to feel unsalvageable. Damned to these black wings. Caught between worlds. The man below could be a way back. But he was too hard to see, the risk of a fall too great. The angel watched souls rising and falling every day, like mirrored rains. Was the man below still looking up? What did he see? Demise foretold. Not solace, not peace. Afraid, much as the angel once was. He remembered the pain of losing her, the agonizing last night. But her appearance now was blurry. He couldn’t remember—were her eyes brown or green? Her face oval or round? The loss remained. The feeling of stark emptiness, that something once there was now gone. A hollowed vessel with no recognizable shape to fill it. He looks up. What is it really that he will gain? He looks down at his reflection, a raven shadow, his only companion in this separate life. It’s a reminder of his soul, his return to the heavens, just out of reach. The moment teeters on irredeemable. He remembers her face now, a near perfect oval, eyes deep set and probing. She watches him now. Humans aren’t meant to outlast their mortal vessels, he thinks. The image under the water turns away, resigned to its fate. Nicole Ravas Nicole Ravas has a BA in English from Marymount University and an MA in Interdisciplinary Education from Santa Clara University. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, she lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, her son, and their two dogs. She is an executive assistant and adjunct instructor at Carlow University, where she received her MFA in Creative Writing with a fiction concentration in December 2020. Prior to working at Carlow, she was a K-12 English teacher for 13 years. She is a fiction reader for the Northern Appalachia Review. In her free time, she is a freelance editor, board game player, and cheesy joke teller.  Resurrection Panel, Trebon Altarpiece, by Master of Trebon Altarpiece (Czech Republic) c. 1380s. Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Trebon Altarpiece, by Master of Trebon Altarpiece. Deadline is April 2, 2021 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include EASTER WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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 piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. 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. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, April 2, 2021. 9. 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. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages!  sToday is the day! Our first Flash in a Flash contest. You have 24 hours to write and submit your flash fiction story. If you haven't entered yet, and today is still March 15th, you can enter at the link below. It is $10 CAD to enter. The winner will receive $100 CAD. We have a small group so far for our first flash only contest, but I know the stories will rock and it will still be a tough choice to pick the top flash! Rules 1. The Ides of March are come! The Ides of March simply refers to "March 15" and the "Ides" are the 15th of any month. But mythology and lore has gotten tangled up with the assassination of Julius Cesar, an event that happened over 2000 years ago on the very Ides that a seer warned him about. The Ides of March was also the day when Roman debts were to be settled, and Ides were also days of animal sacrifice. Voila, an omen was born: today "the Ides of March" means a warning. "Beware, the Ides of March." The human imagination is rich: we are superstitious and love to look for patterns and mystery and meaning, reading signs into all kinds of things. The long history of the Ides of March is really about the making of an omen. The truth is that political assassinations, and all kinds of other ominous events, have happened on every day of the year. Even so, it is fascinating to consider the concept of an omen, an object, day, or concept that takes on a symbolic meaning as a prophetic warning. Every culture has omens. These range from the Ides of March to the crow to the lunar eclipse to doom foretold in sheep entrails. Think about any omen that interests you. It may have been one you feared or believed to be true. It may be from another culture's mythology and you are curious. Find an artwork of that symbol, and write a flash fiction inspired by the omen's lore, the painting (or other art form), and your own imagination. There are a few paintings below. You can use any artwork that depicts an omen, intended or otherwise. How you interpret that is up to you. 2. 1000 words max. Firm. No minimum. 3. Flash fiction only. 4. Due by midnight EST. 5. Winner and selected stories to publish will be announced and posted on March 30, 2021. 6. Winner will be paid by PayPal. 7. One entry only per person. 8. Submit story to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. FLASH IN A FLASH in subject line. 9. No late entries will be accepted. Flash in a Flash Contest Entry
CA$10.00
Flash in a Flash 24 Hour Flash Fiction Contest takes place on March 15. 2021, from 12.01 a.m. until midnight. 1- 1000 words. Selected entries will be published on The Ekphrastic Review. One story will be selected as the winner, and its author will win $100 CAD. Your email will be noted and a reminder will be sent shortly before the contest begins. The prompts will be posted at https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-writing-challenges at 12.01 on March 15. THANK YOU.  By Day She Made Herself Into a Cat, by Arthur Rackham (England) 1920  The despair of the sun-worshipping Peruvian Incas during a lunar eclipse. The people bang drums and tambourines, whip dogs and scream to prevent the eclipse. Handcoloured copperplate engraving by Nasi from Giulio Ferrrario's Costumes Antique and Modern of All Peoples (Il Costume Antico e Moderno di Tutti i Popoli), Florence, 1842  Wheatfield With Crows, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1890  Employment of African-Americans in Agriculture, by Earle Richardson (USA) 1934 The ekphrastic challenge responses for Earle Richardson's painting, above, are up.
Click on image to view post.  Here is a new ebook just in time for poetry month in April!
There are 31 ekphrastic poetry exercises for your writing practice, enough or extra for any month of the year. These are not paintings or artwork prompts, but projects, ideas, and exercises that can incorporate all kinds of artwork. You will never run out of new ways to write poetry with this fun collection of inspiration. Your ebook purchase is a tremendous support to The Ekphrastic Review- THANK YOU. Click on image above, or click here to purchase.  Composition, by Sophie Taeuber Arp (Switzerland) 1931 Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. The prompt this time is Composition, by Sophie Taeuber Arp. Deadline is March 19, 2021 . You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please. The Rules 1. Use this visual art prompt as a springboard for your writing. It can be a poem or short prose (fiction or nonfiction.) You can research the artwork 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. Send only your best works or final draft, not everything you wrote down. (Please note, experimental formats are difficult to publish online. We will consider them but they present technical difficulties with web software that may not be easily resolved.) Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF. 3. There is no mandatory submission fee, but we ask you to consider a voluntary donation to show your support to the time, management, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review. It takes an incredible amount of time to curate the journal, read regular and contest submissions, etc. Paying all expenses out of pocket is also prohibitive. Helping the editor share the time and expenses involved is very much appreciated. There is an easy button to click below to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY.
Send your work to ekphrasticchallenge@gmail.com. Challenge submissions sent to the other inboxes will most likely be lost as those are read in chronological order of receipt, weeks or longer behind, and are not seen at all by guest editors. They will be discarded. Sorry. 5.Include ARP WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line. 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 piece. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. 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. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, March 19, 2021. 9. 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. 10. Selected submissions will be published together, with the prompt, one week after the deadline. 11. Due to the demands of the increasing volume of submissions, we will no longer send out sorry notices or yes letters. You will see what poetry and stories have been selected when the responses are posted one week after the deadline. Understand that we value your participation as part of our ekphrastic community, but we can only choose a handful of the many entries we receive. 12. A word on the selection process: we strive for a balance between rewarding regular participants and sharing the voices of writers who are new to our family. We also look for a variety of perspectives and styles, and a range of interesting takes on the painting. It is difficult to reproduce experimental formatting, so unfortunately we won't choose many with unusual spacing or typography. 13. Please note, some selected responses may also be chosen for our newly born podcast, TERcets, with host Brian Salmons. Your submission implies permission should he decide to read yours. If that happens, you will be notified and sent a link to share. Thank you! 14. By submitting to The Ekphrastic Review, you are also automatically joining our subscribers' list. Your submission is your permission. We don't send Spam and we don't send many emails- you will not receive forty-four emails a day! We send a newsletter zero to two times a month, with hopes of more consistency in the future. It updates you on challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, the podcast, and more. You can cancel at any time, of course, but may find yourself back on the list after another submission. We hope you don't cancel because we like to stay in touch occasionally! 15. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! 16. Please share this prompt with your writing groups, Facebook groups, social media circles, and anywhere else you can. The simple act of sharing brings readers to The Ekphrastic Review, and that is the best way to support the poets and writers on our pages! |
