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Dear Friends,
We continue to reflect on ways to maintain, manage, grow and promote The Ekphrastic Review, in order to maximize readers for our writers. In the beginning, Ekphrastic had a Facebook page. It was short-lived because I found that I was posting items on my own page, along with art and writing from the many other hats I wear. I love the care and feeding of The Ekphrastic Review. I love the community and creativity. We need our own page, too. If you love The Ekphrastic Review and are willing to devote some time to helping establish a Facebook page and growing and promoting the journal and maintaining the page, I'd love to hear from you. Your role would basically mean regularly perusing the journal, and regularly posting about new posts, prompts, news about our writers, and so on. It will require consistency but have great flexibility. Beyond the just mentioned tasks, no other time would be expected of you. Send a note to Lorette at [email protected] and tell me a bit about yourself, what your relationship is to The Ekphrastic Review, and why you care enough to give your time to the cause. THANK YOU. all the best, Lorette
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 Portrait of Elizabeth Baroness Bachofen-Echt by Gustav Klimt (Austria) 1914. Transformation of Lizzie Cocooned in white lace a serious dark-haired woman entwines herself in her cloak, faces the artist, demands metamorphosis. Colorful minions stare transfixed as she emerges – a burgeoning moon moth. Extravagant. Exotic. What sorcery in his brush! Ann Howells Ann Howells, of Dallas, Texas, edited Illya’s Honey eighteen years. Her books are: Under a Lone Star (Village Books, 2016) and a D/FW anthology she edited, Cattlemen & Cadillacs (Dallas Poets Community, 2016). Her chapbook, Softly Beating Wings (Blackbead, 2017), was published as winner of the William D. Barney Chapbook Contest. Her latest collection, So Long As We Speak Their Names, a series of poems centered around watermen on the Chesapeake Bay, will be released in spring from Bowen Books. Recent work has appeared in Chiron Review, I-70 Review, Paddock Review, San Pedro River Review, and The Langdon Review.  The Saint Wilgefortis Triptych, by Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands) ca 1495-1505. The Morning I Woke Looking Like Saint Wilgefortis And even though I had never heard of her, that morning I woke with a beard, and the father I did not have said to me, “No one will never marry you now,” and the large family of aunts and uncles I had never had, but dreamt up every single day, said to me, “No one will ever marry you now,” and my own self which rose and fell every single day, didn’t know what to say to me at all, until one day, the beard grew to my toes, and caught in the toe-rings I had taken to wearing, because they were pretty and I had got them dirt-cheap, and it couldn’t hurt to wear them, and a young art student who had just entered my life, said to me with shining eyes, “If only Bosch could see you now…” which is when I google-found her, beardless though, and nailed to a cross, and of course, this only made things worse, for when I woke the next morning, after a long and unusually dreamless sleep, there I was - nailed to the cross of aunts and uncles I had never had, but had dreamt up every single day. K. Srilata A poet and fiction writer, K.Srilata is a Professor of English at IIT Madras. She has been a writer-in-residence at the University of Stirling, at Sangam house and at the Yeonhui Art Space in Seoul. Srilata’s books include four poetry collections - Bookmarking the Oasis. Writing Octopus, Arriving Shortly and Seablue Child, a novel Table for Four (Penguin), long listed in 2009 for the Man Asian literary prize, three co-edited anthologies The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, Short Fiction from South India (OUP) and All the Worlds Between: A Collaborative Poetry Project Between India and Ireland (Yoda). Srilata co-curates the CMI Arts Initiative and the CMI-Sangam House Writing Residency.  Creation, by Ida O'Keeffe (USA). Date uncertain, prob. 1930s. Emerald Shark Creation was starless obsidian--it broke and ravens shivered their way to the ends of planes and orbs. Vapors roiled against sharp angles mixing cobalt and periwinkle and gold shadows. Declivities turned into tangents alchemied into fine points that then stabbed spheres opened and swallowed them as if the first animal was an emerald shark. t.m. thomson Three of t.m. thomson’s poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards. She has co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry, Frame and Mount the Sky (2017); her chapbook Strum and Lull placed in Golden Walkman’s chapbook competition (2017) and is due out soon; and her chapbook The Profusion will be published in 2019.  Jene Highstein, Ada's Will, 1990, photography by Christine Henske, 2012. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Ada's Will
It rises from the grass like a black flame or a brush thick with ink, more event than actual object: the world as perspective, axis, lens: early autumn leaves lie scattered at the base, gray sky above. It turns out whatever we say is false, nothing to hold the weight of what's left unsaid the way the color of absence pours into this monument, wing, tongue, flame of empty space. The object may be gone, but not the subject: imperfectly polished and pointed like the tip of a wet brush, rising toward its final word. Glenn Freeman This poem was first published in Keeping the Tigers Behind Us, Elixir Press, 2007. Glenn Freeman has published two collections of poems, Keeping the Tigers Behind Us and Traveling Light. He lives with his wife and two cats in small-town Iowa where he teaches writing and American literature and watches the tomatoes grow.  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, by Dorothea Tanning (USA). 1943. Surrealist’s Daughter
Mother’s automatic touch is a brushstroke. It’s the contrast of her meticulous burgundy birth of me and the green unconscious of what I have stolen from her. Whether I am waking or sleeping, I am always at war with nightmare and dream. I conjure a sister to comfort me, but she only props blindly, doll-headed, and leans. Here at the top of the stairs is a cage of shredding. Giant compass of leaves. Mother is behind which door? Mother is in the desert tending her lion-faced dogs. The sunflower’s psychic petals are ochre-electric. Their offense stands my hair on end, whips it up like a crescendo of violins in the theatre’s colourless dark. The flower’s Fibonacci face has at its center Mother’s eye. It fixes me, linened and oiled, in my lifted shock. But see how I am ready for more pluck and tear. These broken tendrils at my button-booted feet, are they Mother’s arms, phantoms of the woman-body that made me? Why can I not step over to the light-opened door? Brittney Corrigan Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collection Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, 2012) and the chapbook 40 Weeks (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, and she is the poetry editor for the online journal Hyperlexia: poetry and prose about the autism spectrum (http://hyperlexiajournal.com/). Brittney lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is both an alumna and employee of Reed College. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/.  Girl Talk, by Erna Kuik (Netherlands). Contemporary. Girl Talk
My ragdoll decides my fate: she says my love for him is soft like a wet noodle handshake. If I were you, she tells me, I’d man up. I’d stop pussy-footin’. I’d seal the deal. She lights a Winston & pours Glen Elgin single malt into a doll-sized tumbler. It’s a typical Tuesday night: The hours pass vacant, cautious, dignified. What I’ve left unspoken forms deep rivers in my waking, deep rivers sing my dreams to sleep. My doll positions an Elvis Costello record on the turntable as she clips her difficult toenails. From her perch on the bookshelf, she grins at the polite distance that’s kept, she grins at the words I’ll never say aloud. Where do your thoughts come from, I ask. Can you see the world, the truth with your crooked button eyes? She leans forward, tossing a nail clipping toward my face. It lands on my lip. I’d grow a pair, she continues. I’d hit it & quit it. Some plight between pride & passion compels me to climb onto the bookshelf & reach for her arm: With that touch, my head goes limp, my hands turn to cloth & it’s she who jumps down, steps into my jeans, & grabs my keys on her way out the door. She says she’s going to find him & kiss him till it hurts. Christie Collins This poem was first published in Canyon Voices and in the chapbook, Along the Diminishing Stretch of Memory (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Christie Collins is an American poet based in Cardiff, Wales. She moved to Wales last year from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she taught full-time in the English Department at Louisiana State University in addition to working as a remote editorial assistant for Copper Canyon Press. In Cardiff, she is a doctoral candidate in Creative and Critical Writing at Cardiff University under the supervision of Richard Gwyn and Ailbhe Darcy. As part of her degree program, she also teaches creative writing workshops for the university. Her critical and creative work has been published in or is forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online, Entropy, Cold Mountain Review, Chicago Review of Books, Canyon Voices, Appalachian Heritage, Poetry South, Poetry Wales, Still: The Journal, Wicked Alice, So to Speak, and Reunion: The Dallas Review. Her chapbook titled Along the Diminishing Stretch of Memory was published in 2014 by Dancing Girl Press. Erna Kuik is a Dutch photographer, visual artist, and writer. After graduating from the Artez Academy in 1992, her artwork was awarded the Gretha and Adri Pieck Prize, an award to encourage young, promising artists. Her work tends toward an expressionistic style, known for its strong lines in linocuts and its poetic content. She wrote and illustrated children's books about very creative hares published by Atlantie Verlag Switzerland and has published other work that features her photography and illustrations. Her art can be found in many private collections worldwide and is exhibited in museums like the Haags Gemeentemuseum in The Hague and Museum De Fundatie in Zwolle and in galleries most recently during Slow Art In Motion Zutphen, Weg van Kunst in Kampen, and Lingeprint Grafiekmanifestatie in Huissen in the Netherlands. She loves to be in her studio; the spirit of making fluid thoughts into sparkling crystals on paper keeps her going. Her book Zwei lange, lange Ohren received many good reviews and was nominated for the Luchs Award by die Zeit in Germany.  Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, by Pablo Picasso (Spain) 1907. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon ‘I will have my place,’ says the ambitious young Spaniard. ‘I will be the world’s greatest painter.’ The older artist doubts this hubris, although this does not prevent him returning the following day to present a painting as a gift. When Matisse leaves, Picasso mocks the older man, and at his Paris lodgings, Le Bateau-Lavoir, he reminds his entourage that, in 1907, this is a still a new century and they are in the midst of a new and exciting movement. Picasso has done with the Blue Period, he has shrugged off the developmental Rose Period, now he is moving more and more into the angularity that will become Cubism. He sets to work on a piece that is inspired by African masks and the Iberian statues he has seen at the Louvre. Of course, there is nothing particularly bold about painting nudes, but Picasso approaches the task from an entirely new angle. Animalistic, confident and threatening, the women stare out from their two-dimensional plane at the viewer, daring comment. He stands away from what he has done to admire the jagged and disjointed look of the painting. "Mon bordel," he exclaims. The shout will resonate around the world for years to come. Henry Bladon Henry Bladon is a writer and art lover based in Somerset in the UK. He writes all types of fiction. He has a PhD in creative writing and runs a writing support group for people with mental health issues. His work can be seen in Writers’ Forum, MicrofictionMonday, FridayFlashFiction, thedrabble, entropy2, and 50-Word Stories , amongst other places.  Picnic, by Thomas Hart Benton (USA). 1944. Picnic
It was a windy day when Adam and Eve left Eden. Adam carried the picnic basket, mindful still of his role as Provider, Protector, the Strong One, neither fully aware of the chasm they had created… not yet. Earth was already rebelling, already at war. A thorn entangled Eve, tore at the hem of her dress, Creation’s last attempt to unclothe her, to go back to the way things were just before… the earth still groans. The trees still had hands then, could still move, could still clap and so they stretched their arms, reaching before the full effect of the Fall froze limbs, and their leaves disintegrated and left crippled fingers. These last moments grasped to gyrate up and out through firmament toward their Creator in praise, or plea… We’ll never know. Cynthia Robinson Young Cynthia Robinson Young is a native of Newark, New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in several journals including Poetry South, Three Line Poetry, Sixfold, and she was a featured poet in Catapula: A Journal of Southern Perspectives. Her poetry chapbook, Migration, was recently published by Finishing Line Press. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee where she is an adjunct professor in Special Education, as well as graduate student in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee.  Virgin on a Crescent Moon, by Albrecht Durer (Germany). 1511. The Virgin and the Crescent Moon
She sits within a starburst on a crescent moon the Child in her arms her gaze intent, eyes lowered The rich drapery of her dress her necklace and the tasseled cushion are far from the stable, the manger Another moon-seated woman swings her leg seductively in a fifties musical and wonders whether there is a future Clair Chilvers Clair Chilvers started writing poetry at the age of 70 after she retired from a career as a research scientist and latterly with the UK National Health Service. She lives in Gloucestershire. She has privately published a pamphlet- Pilgrimage - written following a visit to Palestine and had her first two poems published in online journals in December 2018. Her work has been described as ' powerful and moving' by Anna Saunders founder of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. |
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January 2025
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