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Ekphrastic Challenge: Annaliese Jakimides

9/30/2022

1 Comment

 
Picture
Time-Molt, Tender, by Annaliese Jakimides (USA) 2022

Editor's Note:

We are over the moon to have our esteemed contributor Annaliese Jakimides as our guest editor this time, as well as showcasing her artwork as the ekphrastic challenge prompt.

We can't wait to see what Annaliese inspires in your words!

Lorette


Guest Editor's Note:
​
​I’m so looking forward to what words/stories Time-Molt, Tender offers all you ekphrastic writers. For I have come to know The Ekphrastic Review writers as extraordinary translators of images into words—be it poetry or prose or some combination or combinatoric (that’s a math thing, by the way; I love its sound/rhythm). To me, ekphrasis is a kind of magic. It’s thrilling to witness. And I’m eternally grateful that Lorette has created this world.
 
As a writer, it took me a while to accept that some things I’m carrying insist on being told visually—that I don’t have the words. My visual work is mixed media, and any number of materials might be employed. In this piece, I used all kinds of fiber, including dyed raw wool, plus feathers, teabags, leaves, coffee grounds, with acrylic and inks. I rarely use a brush. And I often look back and have absolutely no idea how I got there.
 
I’m honoured and moved to have been asked to both contribute a visual image and to review the challenge submissions. I’m so looking forward to hearing where this work takes you.
 
Annaliese Jakimides

Annaliese Jakimides writes prose and poetry in a closet in her apartment in Bangor, Maine, after living for many years on a dirt road in the woods near Mt. Katahdin. A finalist for both regional and national awards, her work has been nominated for a Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her most recent publications include “The Long Marriage” in The Ekphrastic Review and “I Tell Henry the Plate Is Red” in Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family (Beacon Press).

**

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working 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 Time-Molt, Tender, by Annaliese Jakimides. Deadline is October 14, 2022.

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

YES

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 above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. If you would like to give more, you can do so here. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​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 JAKIMIDES 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 EST, October 14, 2022.

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. 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! Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
​

​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
​
15. 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!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
1 Comment

Jo Zider: Ekphrastic Challenge Responses

9/23/2022

4 Comments

 
Picture
Nature's Way, by Jo Zider (USA) contemporary. Click on image for artist site.

​For the Readers and the Writers Who Shared Their Words,
 
It was with great pleasure that I read and reflected on the wide variety of submissions in response to Jo Zider’s art. Thank you to the writers who shared their creativity with me. I honour each and every one of their creations. But as guest editor, my challenge was to choose from among them. 
 
I have selected fourteen different perspectives, different ways of experiencing Nature’s Way.

As you read them, I hope you will come away with an enlarged vision of this enigmatic piece of art. Jo has also been deeply moved by the depth of your words.
 
Sandi Stromberg
 
 
**

Three Haikus
 
opaque light
repeated questions
of a screeching owl
 
bio markers
branches paint
a stark sky
 
liquid mirage
bathed in shadows
anti sun
 
Kashiana Singh
 
When Kashiana Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. She currently serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills by Yavanika Press is a journey through 10 cities. Her newest full-length collection, Woman by the Door has just been released in February 2022 with Apprentice House Press. 
 
 
**

Autumn Light
 
As a child I dropped a bead of brown paint
on a clean sheet of paper
and coaxed it skyward
with air blown through a straw.
Soon it was a sapling
with a few spreading branches
that caught light
from a bold yellow ball.
 
Today's tree bears the marks of long life.
Weathered skin, body bent, thickened joints.
The sky is silvered, faceted,
like the aura before a migraine,
something I have come to know.
But the sun, that optimist, remains,
even if I shade my eyes
to paint branches that reach,
and reach some more,
each stretching beyond the page
and beckoning me to hope.
 
Catherine Reef 
 
Catherine Reef's poetry has appeared in several journals, including The Ekphrastic Review. She is a poet and an award-winning biographer, whose most recent book is Sarah Bernhardt: The Divine and Dazzling Life of the World's First Superstar (Clarion, 2020). Catherine Reef lives and writes in Rochester, New York.
 
 
**

Trees of Life
 
My aunt is a wisp of limb as strong as Ironwood, only fifty-seven
rings from her origin, yet finds the boughs of her lungs
encompassed by a tumor too large to remove. Our great branches
of medicine cannot save us from the inherent cycle, nature’s way
of reminding us that all creation is a tree within a tree, reaching
for light, rooted to each other and this earth. Even the faithful grow 
afraid as an ailing tree is stripped of leaves. We raise our prayers,
fearful of the space between distress and relief. Maybe I speak
only for myself, a fear of loss. What a selfish thing, to think
of my own need for the comfort my mother gives, or of my sorrow
for my cousins, their core shaken, scared they could lose
their mother. She has not lost her foliage or beautiful resilience,
but her breath is laboured. Our whole family is a forest trembling
with her, unsure of what to say except we love her, and we’re here
offering our limbs for support, lifting her hope to the sky.
 
Heather Brown Barrett

Heather Brown Barrett is a poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett
 
**

Good and Evil
 
Symbolic are the tree and vine
in canvas sun that seems to shine
to dramatize persistence  —  force
that winter slows to patient course
 
of sculptures stoic, braving cold,
as if with hope by faith foretold
of suns in far more supple days 
caressing their entangled maze 
 
until the leafing sprigs appear
in saint and serpent making clear
the struggle to survive resumes
as battle fought from roots to blooms
 
while unaware that they entwine
as good and evil they define.
 
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.
 
Ekphrastic joy comes not from praise
for words but from returning gaze
far more aware of fortune art
becomes to eyes that fathom heart.

**
 
passages
 
because the world is always
both more and less
than perception permits

 
All these invisible bridges—so many of them—but only the subliminal recognizes their presence and sees how far it is from earth to sky.
 
because humanity straddles the line
between thinking and feeling

 
Crossing is not realized by strength but by letting go, becoming the echo that is given away and then returns.
 
because creation holds its shadow
close, not leading or following
but enveloping itself in a cocoon
like an endless refrain

 
The song listens, its trajectory wandering through and beyond the tangible, pulling all that is silent into its oracular melody.
 
because we are
both more and less
than we could be

 
On the other hand—for there is always one waiting in the wings—is the edge the destination or a leap of faith?
 
because memory and
forgetfulness merge
together and become confused

 
Are we moving toward the end of something, or are we seeds waiting to be tossed into the void?
 
because so much
that we contain
surprises and mystifies
in equal measure

 
What if, is, possibility?—a crazy hope, a kept promise, an Enso painted white on black that turns into an opening into the cosmos--
 
because each voice embodies
both chaos and clarity

 
—a magic portal, a reconciliation of life with itself.
 
because when the end
is reached there is always
more after all

 
Kerfe Roig
 
Kerfe Roig lives and works in NYC, where the many trees keep her company as they nourish all of the city's residents—animal, vegetable and mineral—and reflect the changing seasons of their lives.
 
 
**

Vincent's Tree
 
excerpt from a letter to van Gogh in 1889
Madame Tissot, his neighbour, writes--
 
The tree that stands beyond my garden wall
now bears your name, Vincent --
as I have seen it act
like the trees in your paintings -- wild
with a need to claw the wind
and pull from the yellow dusk
 
a melancholy bile
that saints and pilgrims have known
through the centuries, a restlessness
that unsettles the soul
 
and makes the landscape react
in a sign language of its own.
A language, you master so well
in the storm of your brushstrokes — like the dark
spelling of crows
across a wheat field spasmodic
in shades of gold;
 
or what has been viewed here
in the hills of Provence, the silhouette of trees
begging in their twisted forms
to be seen as something sacred, birth mothers
of a vineyard or wood.
 
Wendy Howe
 
Wendy Howe is an English teacher and free lance writer who lives in Southern California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, diverse landscapes, and ancient cultures. Over the years, she has been published in an assortment of journals both on-line and in print. Among them: The Copperfield Review, Silver Blade Magazine,, The Poetry Salzburg Review, Eye To The Telescope, The Tower Journal and The Orchards Journal. Her most recent work will be forthcoming in  Carmina Magazine  and Sun Dial Magazine later this year.
 
 
**

The Wait

The sky is the colour of the lake
veiled behind the echo of chrysanthemum
and ripples of distance.

The yellow highway inching
its way to meet the grey line of the horizon
is a work-in-progress.
Just like the roofless, unpainted houses
at the edge of the village.

Below the cement bridge, river Kapila,
hums a tune
on loop,
that feels like the leathery back of a memory.

A bare tree stands in meditation,
waiting for spring
to clothe her limbs, green.
 
Preeth Ganapathy

Preeth Ganapathy is a software engineer turned civil servant from Bengaluru, India. Her works have been published in several magazines such as The Ekphrastic Review, Soul-Lit, The Sunlight Press, Atlas+Alice, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Mothers Always Write, Tiger Moth Review and elsewhere. Her microchap, A Single Moment, has been published by Origami Poems Project. She is also the winner of Wilda Morris's July 2020 Poetry Challenge.

**

Down to the Wire

Lying on your side amongst crumpled hotel sheets
your left hip curves like the timber skeleton
of a rowboat blanched to almond by the sun.

I can hear the chatter of birds outside the window
in a leafless liquid amber, and look out to watch them
flap their wings as if to frighten away grey storm clouds 

looming over the twisted trunk and turning the sun 
to a pale stain on the sky. Goosebumps 
bring your skin alive and you pull the doona up 

to interrupt my view. My heartbeat slows as the rain falls. 
We are somewhere unfamiliar pretending 
we’re still ok.
 
Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman
 
Linda is a poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She’s beginning her arts degree in creative writing. In the last 12 months she has been enjoying the thrill of being published and having her work read by people from around the world. 
 
**
 
Shared Roots
 
Hello, old friend.
Has it really been sixty years
since we met? 
 
I’m sorry to see her looking old 
and gnarly, but it’s hard to look 
her best shivering in the winter wind 
without her elegant emerald coat.
 
As a child, I thought she was old, 
like Mama. But trees just grow 
more quickly than little girls, 
especially this girl – small at every age.
 
We were almost like sisters, the way 
we understood each other without words.
She looks glad to see me again, 
seems to bend low for a closer look, 
much like how she used to reach out 
a sturdy limb to help me up, then cradled 
me in her upper branches. 
 
How I welcomed a cool breeze 
in Virginia summers, loved tucking
myself into my private hideaway 
to think about the world. My coming
of age was a rude shock, when Mama 
sent my brother out to saw off 
the low limbs.
 
Today no one seems to be home
in what was once my home, 
so I took a chance on trespassing
to see her. I don’t get back often.
 
Dear friend, thank you 
for giving me a giant’s view 
of the world. Because of you, 
I’ve always tried to look 
at everything from different angles. 
 
Alarie Tennille
 
Alarie Tennille graduated from the first coed class at the University of Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in English, Phi Beta Kappa key, and black belt in Feminism. Retired now, Alarie serves on the Emeritus Board and Programming Committee of the Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri. Her latest book, Three A.M. at the Museum, was named a Director’s Pick at the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s gift shop. Please visit her at alariepoet.com.
 
 
**

Interstellar 

Ash Hawthorn spent his childhood climbing trees in the village meadow and watching the world below. Settled comfortably on a branch, he daydreamed or read books, and made friends with countless birds and squirrels who approached him without fear. At night, he mounted the towering oak tree in the garden and perused the sky, naming the constellations and the planets he learned at school.

For higher education, Ash debated between studying astronomy or botany. In the end he opted for plant biology because of his passion for trees. The celestial objects were far away, yet he could touch and feel the woods, identify their leaves and fruits.  

Ash became a spiritual man as well as a plant biologist. He travelled the world to acquaint himself  with exotic plants in various terrains. Each morning, after his yoga meditation, he hugged a tree and continued a ritual he'd begun so long ago.  At home, he wrapped his arms around the magnificent acacia in the garden. When abroad, he found a local tree to exercise his routine. Trees talked to him, he felt their vibes and communication lines.

On the way back from The Aokigahara Forest in Japan, which some called the suicide or talking forest, he was thrilled to have successfully made it through the challenging trail without a guide or using markings. The trees had guided him as his feet pounded the lava rocks and edged around perilous pit holes.

Ash clicked on the notification from the NASA website he subscribed to and read:

A small, recently discovered asteroid -- or perhaps a comet -- appears to have originated from outside the solar system, maybe from a distant part of  our galaxy. If so, it would be the first "interstellar object" to be observed and confirmed by astronomers.

‘How exciting,’ Ash thought, interstellar, as in science-fiction movies and books. He wished he could see it, and wondered if it would have an impact on earth, perhaps strike it. Probably not, as most space stations were equipped with devices to repel such a happening. Yet, in the event they resorted to such action, what effect would this create on the entire universe? These thoughts occupied his mind as he continued his tours. 

Trekking in the Valdivian rain forest between Chile and Argentina, Ash felt thirsty and hot. He took off his safari jacket and hung it on the branch of a towering Araucaria araucana, better known as the Monkey puzzle tree. Leaning against its trunk, he drank water from the thermos and rested. The air was still, though on its languid current he detected a hint of expectancy. Under the cerulean sky, the tree whispered. He wrapped his arms around it and listened. “Interstellar,” it said. Ash smiled and repeated, “Interstellar.”

He smelled burning, and raising his head, spotted a massive fireball approaching. That was the last thing he saw before his interstellar journey transported him to another dimension.

Sebnam E. Sanders

Sebnem E. Sanders lives on the Southern Aegean coast of Turkey and writes short and longer works of fiction. Her stories have appeared in various online literary magazines, and two anthologies. Her collection of short and flash fiction stories, Ripples on the Pond , was published in December 2017. More information can be found at her website where she shares some of her work: https://sebnemsanders.wordpress.com/Ripples on the Pond

**

The Mystery of What We Are Made Of  
 
is a finger crooked between exclamation
and inquiry, a tree “whose madly peeling
bark is the color of a roan, perhaps, or
an Irish setter.” A gnarled survivalist,
 
the tree maintains its singular skywardness
while cleaving to a straight-from-the-roots viewpoint
not unlike the last two years of pandemic.
It’s like it knew, if we didn’t lose all our leaves,
 
we’d see another rain. Like a sycamore
on a nature trail, towering as weathered
or maybe more so than this darker cousin--
pale bark a library of scrolls, sun and smog
 
leaving it nearly bare-branched. I could hear it
creaking just from the look of it, devoted
as it apparently was to stay in place
with dog-like devotion. Something in the wood
 
to survive despite itself, with the afternoon
glare scorching down on it, all along its bark,
until the question or exclamation into
which its trunk contorted turned ring after ring--
 
an accumulation which became its meaning
and echoes through my roots, into heartwood each
look into the sun over morning coffee--
void scratching as if I were air, not limbs or twigs,

the trunk of me somehow staying in the soil.
 
Jonathan Yungkans
 
*Title taken from the poem “Caravaggio and His Followers,” in the collection Your Name Here. The quote in the opening stanza is taken from the same poem.
 
Jonathan Yungkans finds time to write while working as an in-home health-care provider, aided by copious amounts of coffee and the thought that somehow, sometime, the pandemic's venality will fade. His work has appeared in MacQueen's Quinterly, Panoply, Synkroniciti and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, was published by Tebot Bach in 2021.

**

When I Loved You in the Afterlife
 
                                                      "There's a crack in the glass so fine you can't see it,
                                                       and in the blue eye of the candle flame's needle
                                                       there's a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection
 
                                                        that could contain, like a microchip, an epic
                                                        treatise on beauty..."
                                                                           William Matthews, Miniscule Things
 
     Ink-black the tree branches    crack the stained glass sky --
     how many souls I've loved will meet here    their letter-paned
 
     journeys hidden from me     their wind-whispered spirits
     signs of life?    How brave the ghostly sun to light their message
 
      when the tree is empty, leafless?    It seems that nature's drawn
      this season with a bird's eye --     what's behind them as they fly --
 
      hope for an unzoned and intimate encounter    the future mapped
      by memory's lost horizon...     In a place where 2 worlds meet
 
      on canvas, stripped of life     the promise of color is a garden
      waiting for foliage;     dead trees are reflected  in the water 
 
       of a swamp --  Atchafalaya --    what the Choctaw call Long River.
       Near a bridge I guess we'll always have to cross --   where a sign 
 
      says its name is Old and Lost  --    there's fire in the eyes of an alligator,
      and my grandfather puts Tabasco on everything he eats.    His mother
 
      bakes a cake and hums the fais do-do     while I catch crawfish
      (I call them crawdads) and make them pets --   and  who would guess
 
       what I find  on the artist's bare tree     my hand reaching out
       from its line-like branches --     the shape of river's way roads
 
       when the sky is blue     and a love song is life that I shared with you.
 
       Laurie Newendorp
 
Laurie Newendorp lives and writes in Houston.  If asked, what could she say of this poem?  She has seen a thin-trunked tree with leaves, alive and growing, seemingly suspended above a Scottish bog; so she asks, why do the trees seem to be dead in a swamp?  Her grandfather, born in New Orleans, never ate without a thin-necked bottle of Tabasco, hot sauce made from the red peppers grown off the coast of Louisiana on Avery Island. Ekphrasis has allowed her to explore a wide range of topics, sometimes with family characters popping up, and always with love of her nuclear family, grandsons, children, and their father. 
 
 
**

Consult the Elders of Wine and Elixirs
 
Consult the elders of wine and elixirs
From berries and flowers
At the smoky hours
Between darkness and dawn.
A tree, first ladder to apples and sky,
In heritage orchard of endless fruition.
With secrets harbored in a time-trunk of burls,
Hope chest for the world.
Holder of nets from abandoned arachnids,
Woven like cat’s-cradled fingers
Of children.
And nests knit of twigs nib-needled
By sparrows.
Antlers erected by artisan architect
Frame light, gold as dust spray
Of sunflowers.
And cross-hatched roots etch the earth,
Scratch scriptures of wisdom from ages past.
With limbs crossed—fingers crossed--
Like star-crossed lovers embrace on their way
To the dead of winter. 
 
Cynthia Dorfman
 
Cynthia Dorfman has practiced ekphrastic writing as a frequent participant in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery writing program. She has been a writer, editor, publications director and communications manager in the private and public sectors. Her creative work has appeared on line and in print with the most recent, a story in The Library Love Letter. In the summers she lives in an old shoe factory in Wisconsin, USA.
 
 
**

The Tree Nurtures Life with My Unvaccinated Lover
 
The tree is full of undisturbed mystery
against an egg-fed sky. The tree is full,
nature’s way does not lick as much as blanket, 
olive knots swath around the trunk. 
It’s September. Life is seeping from seed
and skin. Branches quiver, fingers ready to touch 
a bird’s breath. Of chiseled blueness, 
our baby will taste the wind zinging 
like a Copper Canyon Train. Jump on, 
ride through Shangri-La-like valleys 
of cool alpines, and you see a conductor 
reading Don Quixote, now a horse like Rocinante, 
now wake off an epic dream swept as cloudless, 
and now smell mountain marigold outside 
the lowered windows, dusk smells of citrus, 
and now a horizon cracks open, poached.
 
John Milkereit 
 
John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas with trees that don’t look like this one. He works as a mechanical engineer and has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.
 

4 Comments

Ekphrastic Writing Challenge: Ellen Neel

9/16/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Kakaso'Las Totem Pole, by Ellen Neel (Canada) 1955. photo by Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working 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 Kakaso'Las Totem Pole, by Ellen Neel. Deadline is September 30, 2022.

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

YES
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 above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​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.

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7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 

8. Deadline is midnight EST, September 30, 2022.

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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. 

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Luristan Bronze Ekphrastic Responses

9/9/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Bronze Horse Bit Cheekpiece, Luristan (Iran) c. 700 BCE

Fire Breathing Hell

Two mammoth dragons,
master in-between taming,
fire breathing hell.

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. Her most recent book In A Flash, was published in the spring of 2022.

**

The Year I Went Without Doing Battle

There was still steam rising from the mouths of my enemy. Men who rode South until the earth had given out to the sea. A thousand dreams made to drown without reason. I’m not sure being the master of another’s life. Stirs up fire more often than grief. But either one eats at you. Means to steal whatever name the earth had drawn out of its midst. Like a loose thread. Or the soul you no longer had any need. Once you’d been ordained by the winds from up North. For there is no art to it. The dead keep reminding us. And far less craft. From the headdress to the hiss of surrender. From the first scream to its aftermath. It’s an undoing the sun would rather we didn’t have to see to. Be even figuring more. But here’s the deal. Led by two beasts on each side of me. I’ll head West. While my shadow heads East. Only one of them let up for air. Long enough to tell of it.

Mark DeCarteret

Poems from Mark DeCarteret’s manuscript The Year I/We Went Without have been taken by The American Poetry Review, BlazeVOX, The Ekphrastic Review, Guesthouse, Hole in the Head Review, Meat for Tea, Nixes Mate Review, Plume Literary Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal and Unbroken.

**

Master of Animals Part 1

Behrooz (Better Day), simple man, farmed
when he hit bronze in 1928. 
Not farm equipment beautiful,
green-plated. Later 
a cheek plate for horses honed 700 BC
sold to a collector quietly, paid Behrooz in rials, 
Said there might be more where
that came from. 

Tongues lap. Someone spilled like tea. 
Academics, archeologists descend, want and
plow up Behrooz’s fields. 

Ten years. Tenured men flew planes 
for signs of civilization  forgotten only in a
generation.
How on earth? Life died by erosion or buried by
dying plant life later swept aside in mountains of
rain, the land of the dead disappears.
A burial ground, unguarded. 

**

Master of Animals Part ll 

Horse whisperer who’s 
horned deity of hunt.
He holds mythical beasts
barehanded.

Listen to the hissed fury.
Master makes no move,
Implacable bronze horse bit
Cheekpiece has hole in solar
plexus of hunter. Personal 
power, third chakra.

Nomad, not mad, just 
restraining beasts at
bay. Transhumance
transcends bit, bronze,
light, portable
like the mountain people.

Fleeted foot, hurried hoof
following seasonal fields.
To unearth buried bronze, 
seek spring, necropolis not 
far.

​Lynne Kemen

Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful was published in 2020. Her work is anthologized in Seeing Things (2020) and What We See on Our Journeys (2021). She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Fresh Words Magazine, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne stands on the Board of Bright Hill Press. She is an Editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. Her second chapbook, Crows Fly at Midnight, will be published in 2023.

**

Protected
 
dark stallion
adorned you
gallant steed
ride into battle
no demons dare
attack noble beast
winged warriors
open-mouths warn
before battle, wear
 
iron gargoyles
feel beating heart
mine too beats 
we ride as one
beast, man – sword
drawn to strike down
if we fall, rest my
weary head, peaceful
afterlife ensured
 
Julie A. Dickson
 
Julie A. Dickson advocates for captive elephants and shares her home with two rescued feral cats, Cam and JoJo. Her poems appear in various journals, including Girl God, Misfit, Deadbeat Poets and The Ekphrastic Review. Dickson holds a BPS in Behavioral Science and works with in-home seniors with Alzheimer's. She is a former coordinator for 100 Thousand Poets for Change and a past poetry board member.

**

Teacher’s Peak  
found poem in Nietzsche’s prose 
 
What good is my happiness?  
It is poverty and dirt  
and a miserable ease. 
What good is my reason? 
Does it long for knowledge 
as the lion for its food? 
It is poverty and dirt  
and a miserable ease. 
 
It is not your sin, but your moderation  
that cries to heaven. 
Where is the lighting to leak your tongue? 
Where is the madness  
with which you should be cleansed?      
 
Man is a rope, I love those  
who do not know how to live, except 
their lives to be down-going, to be sacrifices. 
The time has come, I go my way, my down-going. 
 
Many, who called themselves his disciples, 
followed him, thus they came to a crossroad: 
there Zaratustra told them that from then on  
he wants to go alone, but his disciples  
handed him in farewell a staff, upon a golden haft, 
of which a serpent was coiled about a sun. 
 
He balanced the staff doubtful in his hands, 
for he disliked how gold always bestows itself; 
how the staff bestowed itself as a balancing act 
upon the shoulders of his sacrifice is a doubtful guess,  
for this was his last teaching etude;  
from then on animals’ roars backed  
his slopping equilibrium of infinitude. 
 
Ekaterina Dukas 

Ekaterina Dukas has studied and taught linguistics and culture at universities of Sofia, Delhi and London and authored a book on medieval art for the British Library. She writes poetry as a pilgrimage to the meaning and her poems have featured often in The Ekphrastic Review and its challenges selection, among others. Her poetry collection Ekphrasticon is published by Europa Edizioni, 2021.

**

We Know

We know it was supposed to be 
an honour, in fact, the greatest 
honour we Luristan steeds could 
have bestowed on us, but shit,
the damn thing weighed a ton.
It hurt like hell, rubbing our cheeks 
raw. Nevertheless, we bowed and 
deigned to grin and bear it, for we 
were famous, we Niseans, sought-
after by the Spartans and the engines 
of the chariots of the Persian kings.

J.R. Solonche

Nominated for the National Book Award and twice-nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of 26 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

**

Homeward Through the Dark

We gathered in the winding darkness there
where six directions met beneath the swelling moon,
upon the fires that danced upon the dancing dust
and silver-plated hills, emblazoning our tents 
and huddled ovens, the rotund wombs of life
that harbored warmth from each escaping breath
and ravening pyre, from livid tongues of flame 
that joined each turning dancer to the sky.

We gloried as our dark-eyed daughters birthed 
upon the frugal steppe an age of wonderers 
content to rattle reason’s numbers in the air and sit
in little groups beneath the arching disk of night 
to contemplate the spangled whirl of rings and spheres 
and wonder what it meant to see them disappear 
within the wilderness of daylight’s sun-struck sight, 
to suffer past the shadow-play of night and firelight 
the fearful coruscating breath of noon and recognize
the rasping presence of a fiery voice, that lunatic 
who beckons from the blinding entrance of the cave.

And some would say that mind has world in it,
or world has mind, yet by and by we found 
we’d always find the logics of disorder there, 
and all the while the winding sky whirls round itself 
out here, right here where there is somehow nothing 
but the turning, nothing but the shoreless river churning
through the unremitting twist of time, no stable space
beneath the coiling dark where worming thought 
might find its place and safely set its bearings.

And all the while a distant starlight rumbles
through the unreceptive air, across the unrelenting 
silences of futures past, the noise that dimly echoes 
only in the eye and leaves us free to picture life 
as we see fit, as dagger, dragon, banquet, bird 
or burning choir, or as a chariot of bronze 
             we haul across the fragrant fields of night
                             on silent wheels of fire.

​DB Jonas

​DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in California in 1951, he was raised in Japan and Mexico. His work has recently appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn, Whistling Shade, Neologism, Consilience Journal, Poetica Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, The Deronda Review, The Decadent Review, The Amphibian, Willows Wept, Sequoia Speaks; Revue{R}évolution and others.

**


Changes
 
At first, they had a Mistress of the Animals, those Black Sea peoples, the plains and horse peoples of Asia Minor. They passed on their heritage from mother to daughter and they brought husbands into the maternal home. The Mistresses watched over their charges, offered grain and wine not blood, made whole, nurtured. The Mistress of the Animals was flanked by lionesses. Nurturing huntresses. 

Did the horses notice the tipping of the world when the Mistress was replaced by a Master, when the lioness guardians grew wings, talons and cruel beaks? Did they feel a change in the hands that held the reins? The plains were as wide, winters as hard, but the hands, were they as gentle? 

The winds that swept those antique plains swept away the tenderness. We reap the whirlwind now; horses bear heavier burdens and cruel bits. They race and jump and dance, carry children in endless circles. They obey, their eyes on the whip, noses sniffing our recycled air. There are no horse dreams in this brave new world.

Poets on the shores of the world’s fringe wrote in the sands of the foaming shallows, in the stars that march across dark hill, of how the world has changed. Utterly. We snatch at the whirling debris, listen for hoofbeats.

Jane Dougherty
 
Jane Dougherty lives and works in southwest France. Her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, The Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

**

Shaman

the secret to channelling
all that power
is to be in the right place
in your mind
to let the magic flow

ibex horns on my head
torc round neck
the griffins pour their chi
through my core
we make a mighty totem

Emily Tee

After years spent with numbers Emily Tee is now writing poetry and flash fiction.  She's had pieces published in Ekphrastic Review challenges and in print with Dreich, with other work forthcoming elsewhere. She lives in England.

**

Ars Bestia Domitor

The urge to create is a burden 
we barely contain. Our thirst 
for control, belly hollow 
since the eve of birth; a bang 
heard when atoms shot out the eye 
of our horse. We need 
water, not droplets from our tap 
dancing, but an outpour 
that sustains. Our impulse 
is a wound that splits 
in two, the shape-shifter; 
our steed turns 
to dragons, their wings an arc 
to whip us, master of none, 
or possibly one-
trick pony. We might be 
mad, but whatever 
we compose it’s an art. Maybe 
we are also flailing 
beasts, but beasts can’t tame 
beasts. Strength forgot-
ten, toes dug in the stirrups, 
we ride on. Our blind horse 
leads us to the water, still 
we will not drink, the harsh 
bronze bit in our mouth.

Heather Brown Barrett 

Heather Brown Barrett is a poet in southeastern Virginia. She mothers her young son and contemplates life, the universe, and everything with her writer husband, Bradley Barrett. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Yellow Arrow Journal, OyeDrum Magazine, AvantAppal(achia), and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Black Bough Poetry. Find her on Instagram @heatherbrownbarrett

**

Indiana Jones and a Horse Bit Cheekpiece

“Who do you think you are? A hatless Indiana Jones?” Elena tsk-tsked and wagged a finger at Desmond. “And at your age?”

“Come on, Elena.” Desmond swiped a hand through what was left of his white hair. “What’s the harm in having a little adventure? I’m not quite ready to retire to a rocking chair and chew on a blade of grass.”

“Couldn’t you take up a different hobby? Something safe and practical? Something legal? Wallpapering. Wiring. Woodworking. If you need suggestions, just ask. This old house needs work.”

“Elena, you know I love you.” Desmond grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “And I’d do almost anything you want. But really, do you expect this retired English professor to fix a leak? Surely not when we can pay someone to do it.”

She regained the use of her hand and picked up the small bronze object lying on Desmond’s desk. “And what will the woman you love do when you’re hauled off to jail for stealing this...this....”

“It’s a horse bit cheekpiece.”

“Oh, really? And you knew that simply by looking at it?” She turned the bronze object this way and that, as if a new angle would reveal its secrets. “What horse in his right mind would prance around with that…thing in its mouth? It must hurt.”

“The cheekpiece spoke to me.”

“Don’t you mean it neighed at you? What did it say? ‘Steal me’?”

“Very droll, dear. I’m afraid you never did have an appreciation for fine art. Around 700 B. C., a fine Persian artist slaved over it for heaven knows how long. It’s a masterpiece.”

“How come last night you didn’t call my chicken Kiev a masterpiece? That’s the least you can do. I slaved over that dead chicken for hours.”

“Dear, you’re missing the point. You know I love your chicken Kiev almost as much as I love you, but I can’t hang it on the wall.”

“Well, you can’t hang this on the wall either. Not unless you want our first born, who, you might recall, is a police chief, to turn you into the authorities for grand theft. I assume this thing is worth a chunk of change.” Elena dropped the cheekpiece on the desk. It warbled an F sharp as it danced atop the oak desk before decrescendoing into a decidedly flat C. “If Albert hadn’t arranged for the return of the Shakespeare’s First Folio you stole--”

“I prefer ‘borrowed.’”

“Pilfered. Pinched. Purloined. Pick your favorite synonym. The museum had you dead to rights. Need I remind you that you weren’t wearing a mask? At least Indiana Jones had the presence of mind to wear a hat. You smiled right into the camera.”

Desmond sighed.

“Without Albert’s assistance. Let me restate that. Without our son’s heavily veiled threats to disclose the provenance of several of the museum’s prized possessions, you’d be in the state pen waiting for our next monthly conjugal visit.”

“I love it when you employ alliteration.”

“Don’t change the subject. You were able to remove this...this thing from the museum. I suggest you put that retired English professor mind of yours to good use and figure out a way to unremove it. Pronto.”

“Elena, you don’t mean that.”

“Oh, but I do. Did I mention I’m rereading Lysistrata?”

“Oh, god, Elena. Not again.” Desmond groaned and jumped to his feet. “I just remembered I have to run uptown to do an errand.”
Desmond snatched up the cheekpiece and cradled it to his bosom, In a faraway, forlorn voice, he said, “This would have been perfect over there, right next to the statue of Ishtar.”

“I’ll miss you while you’re gone.” Elena bussed his cheek. “Darling, will you be back in time for dinner? I’m fixing beef Wellington.”

“Beef Wellington?” Desmond sighed and studied the cheekpiece. “Oh, most definitely.”

When she heard the front door close, Elena smiled and thanked her favorite author, Aristophanes. Long before that Persian artist was kicking in his mother’s belly, Aristophanes wrote a brilliant play that continues to inspire women. Just the mere mention of Lysistrata was enough to make Desmond behave. One of these days, Elena thought, I just might get around to actually reading it.

Paula Messina

Paula Messina writes short and long fiction, essays, and feature stories. She reads literary works in the public domain for librivox.org. When she isn't working on her novel set in Boston during World War II, she can be found strolling along the United State's first public beach.

**

I Pursue Dance Lessons with My Unvaccinated Lover
 
In the cracked-mirror room, we steer, 
quick and slow on the salsa floor—hole 
 
inside my stomach—and, nectar,
inhale your blood orange, blonde leather, 
 
and white woods. Demons appear behind 
in dizziness, bronze winged, curled tails, burnt 
 
tongue-laughter, taunting my 2-3-5 & 8 roll 
while they squash other chickened students. 
 
The recess-lit habitat has a yield strength of 
taffeta: I bite the minutes, roll a mouthful, 
 
press your lovely shoulder blade the way I want 
love pressed into. Right left right and scariness 
 
or spaghetti awkwardness. Happiness is a horned 
god that centers the body. I am a nomad fighting 
 
past every past & future variant of myself. 
I am concerned about the unbitten 
 
Fredericksburg peaches and the hatch green 
chiles from our last road trip—another salsa 
 
recipe to ruin. Try to enjoy the dance without 
beads of sweat. Trust that a titanic array, 
 
a shimmering zenith will lead with steps to follow.

John Milkereit

John Milkereit lives in Houston, Texas working as a mechanical engineer. He has completed a M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. His work has appeared in various literary journals including Naugatuck River Review, Panoply, San Pedro River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. His next full-length collection of poems, A Place Comfortable with Fire, is forthcoming from Lamar University Literary Press.

**

Wakizashi.

Walking to your house the day after you died
I saw myself as a doll with arms and legs of stone
protruding from a torso now a gaping maw in rictus - the wind 
streaming through the wet tangle of my grief. A vase 

of white chrysanthemums beckoned me 
through your loungeroom window, their petals
soft with shadows from the half-drawn blinds, and I imagined
Mum’s slippered footsteps sliding along kitchen vinyl, each swish

echoing the sound of a swift sharp downward cut.

Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman

Linda is a poet living in Lake Tabourie, NSW Australia. She is just beginning her arts degree in Creative Writing. She has recently been published in three anthologies, on Viewless Wings.com, in The Ekphrastic Review, with poems forthcoming in the next edition of the Star 82 Review, right hand pointing and One Sentence Poems (OSP).  Linda adores animals, family, and good champagne not necessarily in that order.

**

Cheekbit From a Grave in Luristan, 700 BCE

You. Your horn-crown
declares your status,
scares
marauders,
shields
your horse's vision,
to keep it straight,
focused
and true to your command. 
 
And yet ...
we only found one of you? 
 
Why is it, a burial,
such a holy thing,
set to preserve
man and beast and shield
for a safe gallop into the afterlife,
can so easily be raided? 
 
Neither your snake gods
nor your devil's tails
nor your beast-like human head 
can deter 
the ragged grave-digger,
eternally electrified 
by greed.

Anita Jawary

Anita Jawary is a Melbourne artist, writer and poet.  She waits for spring, and writes. 

**

Bridle 

A barren field, dirt-clod  
Rock-strewn, root-twisted 

Brats at the table, bawling. 
I offer a prayer to overcome. 

It is an impossible task. 
There is no other way but to go on 

The bare table gleams  
The dull morning beckons 

Each muscle in my body aches 
Wishes to lie entombed in clay. 

With a cacophony of children crying 
I can no longer dream of shifting this yoke 

So I ask the impossible  
Yoke monsters to my horse’s bridle: 

First the alchemy of the crucible 
Then the careful anvil work calling forth 

Griffons, dragons and me 
With horns on my helmet! 

Between the soft lips of my poor nag  
This magic bridle. 

So she must, at all costs, 
Cost to her gentle quivering lips 

Pull my plough  
Feed my family. 

Lucie Payne


Lucie is a retired Librarian who is fascinated by ekphrastic challenges and is writing as much as  she can.

​**

The Red Horse Louisa
 
On a sunny summer day,
I almost caused my father’s death
in the old fenced lumberyard
a photographer taking black and white pictures
father holding the bridle of his red horse Louisa.
 
I am holding father’s hand, skipping to his side
I want to be in the photo
pigtailed Magyar refugee girl.
I pick up a horsewhip
 
standing behind the mare 
father receives a rear kick
steel hooves striking his chest
 
father does not fall to the ground
so I could hug him back to life
he does not beat me with a rubber baton
the sun continues shining,
 
but four decades later
oh I want to hug father again
in his coffin, my little apu.
 
River town Donaustauf, by the Danube
Bavarian Forest chalk hills ridge
 
on a sunny summer day,
remember that day in the Baracke 
my brother József is born,
a boy after four girls 
and I am a tomboy
helping father feed three horses
 
but father forgets me
a small photo in the sunshine.

Ilona Martonfi

Ilona Martonfi is a mother, an activist, an educator, literary curator, poet and an editor. Born in Budapest, Hungary, she has also lived in Austria and Germany. Martonfi writes in seven chapbooks, journals across North America and abroad. Curator of the Argo Bookshop Reading Series. Recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2010 Community Award. Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. The Tempest, Inanna Publications, spring 2022, is her fifth poetry book.

**

The Warrior-Poet of Luristan
 
Consider the Farmer. When his field
yielded an ancient crop of bronze,
did he stand in awe in the middle
 
of the row, turning the bit cheekpiece
in his hands? An artifact of such deft
craftsmanship, Master of Animals
 
holding the reigns of two chimera--
part bird, part ibex—one balanced on a hare,
the other on a fish. Or did silver
 
dance in his eyes as he rushed to market?
It was the 1920s. But step back
some millennia. Consider the Rider.
 
Perhaps a Mede or a nomadic
Cimmerian from southern Russia
or a Kassite. A man considered
 
cultured for his time. Perhaps he was
a warrior-poet like Lu Chi
in second-century China, or
 
a chronicler like Homer. Perhaps he told
the struggles and suffering of his clan
around campfires. And when he set
 
the sacred bronze, the Master of Animals
in his horse’s mouth, what bit did he clench
in his own as the last crisis brought him
 
to his knees? When he thundered across
frosted fields into battle. When he dragged
himself back weeks, maybe months, later
 
to his river-home. When he found his people
scattered, now bones in a fallow field.
Did he weep, cry out his grief to the Master,
 
to the animals, to the bit he had
thought blessed? Did he feel deserted,
suffer a loss of faith? Or did he reach  
 
deep into his pain and begin to gather
words of mourning and war, knowing to suffer
would always be man’s fate?
 
Sandi Stromberg
 

Sandi Stromberg’s poetry has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net. She is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, which has honored her with one of its Fantastic Ekphrastic Awards. She has contributed to the Review’s Throwback Thursday and is currently the guest judge of the Jo Zider Challenge, https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-challenges/ekphrastic-writing-challenge-jo-zider-with-guest-editor-sandi-stromberg.


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Join our Art of Tarot contest! Click here or on image above for details. Be inspired by a selection of curated images on the theme. Write flash fiction of poetry. Win prestige and cash prizes! Special guest judges Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib.
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New Contest!!!! The Art of Tarot- with guest judges, Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib

9/2/2022

4 Comments

 
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​We are very pleased to announce our new ekphrastic contest, on the theme of Tarot art. And we are absolutely thrilled to have guest judges Riham Adly and Roula-Maria Dib on board! Riham, our flash fiction judge, reads, writes, and teaches from the framework of the unconscious and has a special interest in Tarot imagery. Roula-Maria, editor of Indelible Journal, is a renowned Jungian scholar and poet. Find out more about these writers, their work, and what they'll be looking for below.

The Tarot's evolution from parlour games to gambling houses to divination claims is as fascinating as the timeless and mysterious archetypal images on the cards. The Tarot is widely used today for cartomancy, but it started out as a popular game and took a mystical turn in the 18th century. A modern approach is to use the archetypal symbols that fascinated Carl Jung for therapeutic purposes, psychological reflection, and creative exercises.

We can't wait to see what these images inspire you to write!

 **

The Art of Tarot Rules

1. $10 CAD (approx. $7 USD) entry fee gets you an ebook with 36 Tarot-themed images, and you can submit three flashes or poems. First place prize for poetry and for flash fiction land $100 CAD prize each.

2. You can enter as many times as you like, using The Art of Tarot purchase button below as many times as you wish.

​3. Poetry and flash fiction, up to 750 words per piece.

4. Use one or more of the artworks in the booklet to inspire your stories and poetry. You can interpret the artwork and the theme in any way you are moved to. Read the judges' overviews in this post (below) to get a feel for what they're looking for.

5. Ten poems and ten flashes will be chosen by the editor of TER and by our guest judges to publish in The Ekphrastic Review. Three poems and three stories will be finalists. One poem and one flash will take first place and each win $100CAD. The judges will read submissions blind.

6. Include a 75 words or less bio.

7. Use TAROT in the subject line.

8. Deadline is November 23, 2022.

9. Winners will be announced in December.

10. Submission email: theekphrasticreview@gmail.com

​
A Word From Our Guest Judges

Sometimes, the only way for us to confront a truth is to summon that never-ending fast track we call life, viewing it in a whirr, before slowing down to examine its components under the microscope. Having discovered that Tarot cards are nothing but archetypical images representing one’s journey—or what mythologist Joseph Campbell describes as “the hero’s journey,” we can use these symbols to create stories that thrust us further into the essence of our characters' journey, their perspectives and core emotions. The journey could be something as subtle as small adjustments that characters realize they need to go through, or revelations that are deep and internal. I would love if you could explore the storylines and the archetypical images in those cards using details, colours, and associations to see into the depth of your own Self. From there, explore new themes in your own writing, perhaps revisiting recurring themes, and understanding where it’s all coming from, as you craft your flash fiction.

Riham Adly

It is a with great honour and pleasure that I partake in this exceptional event, The Art of Tarot, so carefully put together by the inspiring artist, poet, and writer, Lorette C. Luzajic. While I don’t understand much about the Tarot in terms of technique, what I know is that it is a powerful array of symbols and images that move our archetypal energies into action. And the difference between “knowing” and “understanding”, by the way, is also something Tarot cards teach us. They speak to us in the language of poetry, which we grasp without any conventional tools of rational comprehension. Because symbols point toward possible meanings, the images of the Tarot speak possibilities without fixed meanings, pointing to the non-rational aspects of who we are.

​Unlike literalism and just like poetry, the Tarot brings back this symbolic essence of connection to other forms of reality. These cards are their own unique “alphabet” sparking truths through negative capability and synchronicities—a fascinating “alphabet” that the psyche can only fathom archetypally. We would see that each card has its own character, flavour, or personality, which matches one of our many archetypal voices that were activated while looking at it. And it is with great excitement to read your poems inspired by such rich visual language, the language of symbols, open—as ever—to hosting the unconscious. The ekphrastic journeys of your poems are evidence of your transition from the “visual” to the “visionary,” where the different voices of the images come to you to be embodied in such beautiful verse!

Roula-Maria Dib

Riham Adly is an award-winning flash fiction writer from Giza, Egypt. In 2013 her story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. In 2022 she won second prize in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition. She is a Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is included in the Best Micro-fiction 2020 anthology.  Her fiction has appeared in over 50 online journals   such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Sunlight Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Flash Frontier, Flash Back, Ellipsis Zine, Okay Donkey, and New Flash Fiction Review among others.  Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 Words and as a first reader in Vestal Review. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region.  Riham’s flash fiction collection Love is Make-Believe was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House in the UK. She is the first African, Arab woman to have a flash fiction collection published in English. Riham shares her craft articles about writing flash fiction through her blog “Riham Writes” and reviews a new flash fiction collection every month on her FB group “Riham Reads Flash.”

Roula-Maria Dib is an award-winning literary scholar, poet, and editor whose research interests include literature, modern poetry and poetics, creative writing, and Jungian psychology. She is endorsed by the British Academy and holds a UK Global Talent Visa. Roula is the winner of the British Council’s Alumni Awards 2021-2022 for the Culture and Creativity category in the UAE and had also won the American University in Dubai’s Provost’s Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement 2020; her book, Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020) was shortlisted as a finalist for the international IAJS book awards, and some poems from her collection, Simply Being (Chiron Press, 2021) received Pushcart Prize nominations. She is the founding editor of literary and arts journal, Indelible, and creative producer of literary event series, Indelible Evenings, as well as Psychreative, a virtual salon for researchers, artists, and writers with a background in Jungian psychology. Her MOOC, “Why Online Creative Communities Matter” is featured on Academia.edu. Formerly (until June 2022), she was a professor of English at the American University in Dubai.

The Art of Tarot- 36 magical art prompts for your writing practice

CA$10.00

An eclectic curation of art on Tarot themes, including various Tarot cards.

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Ekphrastic Writing Challenge: Jo Zider, with Guest Editor Sandi Stromberg

9/2/2022

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Picture
Nature's Way, by Jo Zider (USA) contemporary. Click on image for artist site.

Editor's Note:

We are very excited to have our long-time ekphrastic contributor Sandi Stromberg as our guest editor this time! She has chosen an artwork by Jo Zider. Welcome, Sandi and Jo.

Lorette

Guest Editor's Note:
​
​Dear Co-Lovers of Words and Art,
 
As an addict to The Ekphrastic Review and its biweekly challenges, I’m thrilled to be a guest editor. I hope Nature’s Way, by Houston artist Jo Zider will draw you in and stimulate your imagination.
 
For the past four years, I’ve benefitted from these challenges, especially throughout the pandemic. In the process, I’ve been introduced to a wide variety of art as well as to the writers whose work is often selected. And while editor Lorette C. Luzajic encourages writers to be a continuing part of the challenges, she also makes ample room for new voices. Her intent has always been to create a family of co-lovers of words and art. 
 
My choice of Jo’s art seemed a good segue after the successful Zoom workshop Lorette led for members of Houston’s Women in the Visual and Literary Arts (WiVLA). I’ve been a member since 1999, and Jo was one of the first artists I met. 
 
She is a ceramicist and sculptor whose work and passions can be found on her website https://jozider.com/. The piece I offer as a prompt is part of a series titled Earth at the Edge. Many thanks to her for permitting the use of her art. She and I both look forward to your responses, whatever form they may take.
 
Sandi 

Sandi Stromberg’s poetry has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and for 2020 Best of the Net. She is a dedicated contributor to The Ekphrastic Review and recently contributed a Throwback Thursday. In 2021, the Review awarded her a Fantastic Ekphrastic Award for her contributions to the genre. Her poetry has appeared in many  journals and anthologies, including San Pedro River Review, The Ocotillo Review, Houston Chronicle-San Antonio Express-News, Snapdragon, Words & Art, Visual Verse, Weaving the Terrain, Enchantment of the Ordinary, and in Dutch in the Netherlands in Brabant Cultureel and Dichtersbankje (the Poet’s Bench).

**

The Rules


Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrasis! We feature some of the most accomplished, influential writers working 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 Nature's Way, by Jo Zider. Deadline is September 16, 2022.

You can submit poetry, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, microfiction, or any other form creative writing you like. 1000 words max please.

Voluntary gift of $5 CAD with submission.

YES

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 above to share a five spot through PayPal or credit card. If you would like to give more, you can do so here. Thank you. A voluntary gift does  not affect the selection process in any way.

​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 ZIDER 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 EST, September 16, 2022.

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 for challenge submissions. 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. 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. Our newsletter occasionally updates you on some of the  challenges, news, contests, prize nominations, ekphrastic happenings, prompt ebooks, workshops, and more. 
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​14. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges!
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15. 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!

16. Check this space every Friday for new challenges and selected responses, alternating weekly.
 

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