 Swan Series, by Hilda af Klint (Sweden) 1914-15 Ramona and the Swans Ramona writes to me I remember our walks when we talked of existentialism & esoteric things. We were such serious girls. One day we saw a starling dead on the roadside dreaming of being fully human. Today in my garden a rush of wind recalls the movement of wings & Hilma af Klint’s paintings: the first in her series Swan: two birds. One black male with yellow beak the female white & blue. The paintings grow more abstract until two swans become a segmented circle divided by a spectrum of colour on a red square, Hilma reaching for the essence of swan to express the merging of opposites. Ramona’s letter says she now believes in evil. I don’t know what to think. I could explore the Mill Pond swans investigate beauty & violence. ** In the fifteenth century Edward IV’s Act Concerning Swans limited owning and eating swans to the monarchy and gentry. On Long Island the killing or harming of mute swans is a criminal offense but they are also an invasive species displacing native water birds sometimes their eggs moved or destroyed to save the local fowl. Once I walked the small street where I lived with my two toddlers giggling until we faced a swan, an awkward fiercesome thing before us. Would wings attempt to smother us a beak peck skin? she walked on. Laurel Brett Laurel Brett has been viewing art since she was a tiny child on outings with her father. Paintings feature prominently in her novel, The Schrödinger Girl, and her debut poetry collection, Penelope in the Car (Indolent Press, 2029, available for preorder.)
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 Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth (USA) 1948 We Could Live There, Christina You have gone out a little way in the field letting a slice of night between us. Still, we are stitched together like a peasant blouse, yellow flowers embroidered, your scent inside. I don’t blame the slice of night. I don’t blame you. There is nothing to blame. When morning comes I want to wake like a children’s drawing To the sun’s yellow spikes, grass a careless quiver of green slashes, house with chimney and smoke, a brown dog, maybe, melting into the grass. How beautiful, this shattered world! I will pull you from that field into the house you drew, and we carried in unopened boxes all the way to today. Or, I will lie down in the field next to you. Jeffrey Skinner Jeffrey Skinner’s most recent book of poems, Sober Ghost, appeared in June, 2024. His Selected will appear in 2026. In 2014 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, and in 2015 was given an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award for literature. His recent work has appeared in The North American Review, Image, Volt, and Fence.  Ekphrasis Anonymous- a new monthly series of generative ekphrastic writing zooms, with a curated selection of diverse artworks to challenge your practice. Use the session to brainstorm ideas or write first drafts, whether poetry or fiction. The first session in January was amazing, with so many of you writing astonishing pieces that seemed to come out of nowhere. We do four to six artworks per session, with a few minutes for a couple of writers to share after each writing exercise. This is a great way to try writing to a range of artworks and to experiment, explore, and play. Join us! Ekphrasis Anonymous February
CA$40.00
Introducing a new monthly generative writing session with ekphrastic prompts. Each session will include a curated selection of diverse artworks and prompt ideas for brainstorming and generating poetry or fiction. We will look at and discuss each artwork briefly, then spend time writing. We will have a few minutes to talk about our process and the option for a couple of people to share their drafts after each exercise. The curated artworks will be a grab-bag each time, from different artists, eras, styles, and cultures, chosen to inspire your writing and challenge you to new directions. Ekphrasis Anonymous March
CA$40.00
Introducing a new monthly generative writing session with ekphrastic prompts. Each session will include a curated selection of diverse artworks and prompt ideas for brainstorming and generating poetry or fiction. We will look at and discuss each artwork briefly, then spend time writing. We will have a few minutes to talk about our process and the option for a couple of people to share their drafts after each exercise. The curated artworks will be a grab-bag each time, from different artists, eras, styles, and cultures, chosen to inspire your writing and challenge you to new directions. Ekphrasis Anonymous April
CA$40.00
Introducing a new monthly generative writing session with ekphrastic prompts. Each session will include a curated selection of diverse artworks and prompt ideas for brainstorming and generating poetry or fiction. We will look at and discuss each artwork briefly, then spend time writing. We will have a few minutes to talk about our process and the option for a couple of people to share their drafts after each exercise. The curated artworks will be a grab-bag each time, from different artists, eras, styles, and cultures, chosen to inspire your writing and challenge you to new directions. To the Cows Drinking from a Stream in a Painting from Centuries Ago, by Christine Osvald-Mruz1/29/2026  Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, by John Constable (England) 1825 To the Cows Drinking from a Stream in a Painting from Centuries Ago You look so unbothered, wading in the turquoise shallows, bowing your smooth foreheads. You dunk your square muzzles, your leaf-like ears nonchalant at the sound of trickling water. You stand under ancient trees of summer foliage, mossy trunks, light blue sky, puffed clouds. You don’t care who is king, suffer matters of church and state or seethe with moral outrage. You wade and drink, maybe look around, breathe and low. I’m sure you have your troubles, too. Rough stones under your hooves; flies. Being milked, being eaten. But your steady backs bear no fear of dark times, no bracing for bad news. Like the trees, the moss, the sky, the clouds - Won’t there always be cows? Won’t there always be streams? Of what can we be sure? Christine Osvald-Mruz Christine Osvald-Mruz is an attorney in private practice and the mother of four sons. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Christine is the daughter of a Hungarian immigrant father who taught French and an English-teacher mother. Originally from Long Island, New York, she lives in Morristown, New Jersey. Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review.  Spider Invasion, photography by Evelyn Eickmeyer-Quinones (USA) contemporary Lines on a Vibrant Dahlia Like you, Medusa was a beauty, too, but then her lovely locks to adders turned and stunned so much those who beheld her that their warm, live flesh to cold dead stone transformed. You, though, possessed with rich resplendent crown, draw devotees, unlike that Gorgon fiend. Yet those who give your glory but a glance do not perceive some noxious fatal end. No, they would have to scrutinize your core, hermaphroditic center, where reside the pistil and the stamen of your bloom, which like a dazzling star beguiles and guides winged pollinators, acolytes of your rebirth. For in your eye lies something still, dark, spindly-legged, and dire that waits for one to light for it to venomize with nimble skill. Terry L. Norton Terry L. Norton is a retired professor of literacy at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Among his books are Cherokee Myths and Legends: Thirty Tales Retold (2014), Trickster Tales of Southeastern Native Americans (2023), and Monkey Tales Around the World: A Folklore Anthology (2024), all published by McFarland. Among other publishing venues, his poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Chained Muse, The Society for Classical Poets, and New Lyre. Evelyn Eickmeyer-Quinones lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and is a long-time member of the South Carolina Writers Association. Her photographs have been published in Next Avenue, a PBS digital platform, and in Moonshine Review, a journal of creative prose and photography. The photo Spider Invasion, taken in her husband’s garden with a Nikon Coolpix B500 digital camera, won first place in the 2023 Kakalak Anthology of Poets and Artists.  St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, by Mateo Cerezo, the younger (Spain) 1663 What He Knows In prayer, with hands open and heart exposed, as if beseeching mercy, Francis lifts his eyes To the heavens. A cherub blows fire. The searing flesh, carries the metal-staked pain Of wounds in his palms and feet, ripped skin, bone and tendon. As blood trickles from his side, He will remember the tip of the spear, delivered not out of a soldier’s mercy but easy confirmation. Surrounded By darkness, he believes this is the knowledge of his savior, the cross bearer, the sacrificial lamb for the brutality people inflict upon themselves for money or fear, rooted in a world trained by government, By empire, who cede violence to the people after training them to willingly deliver the sentence. The crowd has washed their hands of radical forgiveness and chosen violence to extinguish the soft power Of love. Each day, through birth, death, and re-birth in the liturgical season, those wounds will remind Francis Of Christ as the light of human potential as well as the swirling darkness of empire’s inhumanity. Tom Lagasse Tom’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. He won the 2025 E. Ethelbert Miller Poetry Prize. He was an Artist in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood in 2024. He writes a monthly column on creativity for The Bristol Edition and currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Bristol, CT.  Boulevard des Capucines, by Claude Monet (France) 1873/1874 Boulevard des Capucines To rent a studio to show and sell such innovative work was bold and smart for certain artists wanting to dispel outdated biases regarding art. Since arbiters of taste at the Salon could limit who-with-what came through the door, these enterprisers ready to move on would do so in a gallery, third floor. Yet in the months before the opening Monet was captivated by the view from this same space—Parisians hustling through wintry weather as they needed to. Up close, the piece has always looked unfinished; its impact, further back, is undiminished.  The Break up of Ice on the Seine, by Claude Monet (France) 1880-81 The Break up of Ice on the Seine Some twenty paintings were devoted to a catastrophic season. Bitter cold turned warm enough to send wild ice floes through the countryside. Such forces uncontrolled pushed talented Monet to represent as many versions of what he observed as possible. So hour on hour was spent creating a collection which well served his purposes of multiplicity, perhaps deriving from an inner drive to justify a life of artistry. This Frenchman proved himself alert, alive with variations of the same motif, all marvelous but none beyond belief. Jane Blanchard Jane Blanchard of Augusta, Georgia, enjoys looking at art and writing about art. The sonnet—in all of its manifestations—is her favourite form of poetry. Her latest collection with Kelsay Books is Furthermore. All You Have to Do Is Believe ... after Gargoyles, by Michael Parkes (Spain, b. USA) 1985 https://borsini-burr.com/artists/michael-parkes/gargoyles Behind the fearsome gargoyle guard of her father’s castle, stands girl in long yellow summer dress, teddy bear forgotten, rests by her feet. By tail of the sitting gargoyle a glass bowl, near full of soapy water, into which she dips a small, bent wire blows perfect, delicate bubbles into summer sky. Fetch, she whispers, taps the stone gargoyle on his shoulder. Carved to protect the castle, the king, the girl he doesn’t think, doesn’t argue, leaps from the marble ball on which he crouched for ages, stretches his body, his arm for the floating bubble unaware he isn’t alive unaware he is sculpted of stone unaware he can’t float like the bubble he reaches, reaches. Lenora Rain-Lee Good Lenora Rain-Lee Good lives near the Columbia River in Kennewick, WA. Her latest chapbook, Saying Goodbye to Thomas, published by Finishing Line Press has just been released. She writes fiction, radio dramas, and her love—poetry. Her poetry has appeared in online and print anthologies, including Dos Gatos Press, Quill and Parchment, Fixed and Free, and Cirque Journal. Her favourite poetry quote: “A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.” ~ Robert Heinlein  Shigaraki Vessel (Japan) c. 15th or 15th century. Photo by Susan Fealy. The Wabi-Sabi Storage Jar It’s large enough to lair an animal. Gravelled, rich-red, its slabs Roughly rhyme around its opening. One smooth black lip binds its craggy lip: Night kisses a mountain. It is pocked in silver as if Fire dragged its starlight to the surface: A crime of green Found a home here When flame collided with clay. Susan Fealy This poem first appeared in Cordite. Susan Fealy lives in Melbourne/Naarm, Australia. Her poems appear regularly in Australian journals and anthologies including Best of Australian Poems 2025. Her debut collection Flute of Milk won the 2017 Wesley Michel Wright Prize and shortlisted for the 2018 Mary Gilmore Award. Her forthcoming collection explores many border crossings including ekphrasis ( The Deer Woman, Upswell Press 2026).  Join us for the epic event of the year. It's the annual ekphrastic marathon! You won't be sorry. It is wild, exhilarating, exhausting and wonderful. A day of pure creation. Play. Brainstorming. Join us on Sunday, July 12, or do it on your own time over the following week. This year, to celebrate eleven years of The Ekphrastic Review, an optional Champagne Party follows the marathon on zoom. Details are below. Scroll down to register. Heaven Eleven: an Ekphrastic Marathon Try something intense and unusual- an ekphrastic marathon, celebrating ten years of The Ekphrastic Review. Join us on Sunday, July 12 2025 for our annual ekphrastic marathon. This year we are celebrating eleven years!!!!! This is an all -day creative writing event that we do independently, together. Take the plunge and see what happens! Write to fourteen different prompts, poetry or flash fiction, in thirty minute drafts. There will be a wide variety of visual art prompts posted at the start of the marathon. You will choose a new one every 30 minutes and try writing a draft, just to see what you can create when pushed outside of your comfort zone. We will gather in a specially created private Facebook page for prompts, to chat with each other, and support each other. Time zone or date conflicts? No problem. Page will stay open afterwards. Participate when you can, in the week following the 12th. The honour system is in effect- thirty minute drafts per prompt, fourteen prompts. Participants can do the eight hour marathon in one or two sessions at another time and date in the week following July 12. . Polish and edit your best pieces later, then submit five for possible publication on the Ekphrastic site. One poem and one flash fiction will win $100 CAD each. Last year this event was a smashing success with hundreds of poems and stories written. Let's smash last year out of the park and do it even better this year! Marathon: Sunday July 12, from 10 am to 6 pm EST (including breaks) (For those who can’t make it during those times, any hours that work for you are fine. For those who can’t join us on July 12, catch up at a better time for you in one or two sessions only, as outlined above.) Champagne Party: at 6.05 pm until 7. 05 on Sunday, July 12, join participants on Zoom to celebrate an exhilarating day. Bring Champagne, wine, or a pot of tea. We'll have words from The Ekphrastic Review, conversation as a chance to connect with community, and some optional readings from your work in the marathon. Story and poetry deadline: July 31, 2026 Up to five works of poetry or flash fiction or a mix, works started during marathon and polished later. 500 words max, per piece. Please include a brief bio, 75 words or less Participation is $20 CAD (approx. 14.50 USD). Thank you very much for your support of the operations, maintenance, and promotion of The Ekphrastic Review, and the prizes to winning authors. If you are in hardship and cannot afford the entry, but you want to participate, please drop us a line at [email protected] and we'll sign you up. Selections for showcase and winning entries announced sometime in September. Sign up below! Heaven Eleven: the annual ekphrastic marathon
CA$20.00
Celebrating the eleventh birthday of The Ekphrastic Review! It's the event of the year, our annual ekphrastic marathon. Each year, writers around the world spend a day writing ekphrastic poems and stories. We work asynchronously from wherever we are: fourteen drafts, one every 30 minutes. Choosing from a wide selection of diverse artworks, you free write drafts, starting a new sprint every thirty minutes. The goal of the marathon is to finish it. It's an incredibly intense experience! It's an opportunity to be immersed in art, spend a whole day in pure creation, and to explore, play, and invent. You will surprise yourself and write unexpected things. From your fourteen drafts, you have the option of polishing and revising, then submitting five works before July 31. A selection of finalists and one winner in the flash fiction category and the poetry category will be published in The Ekphrastic Review. The winning entry in poetry and in flash fiction will each receive $100CAD prize. Following the marathon itself will be an optional Champagne Party on zoom to celebrate our hard work. This will be an informal chat and chance to connect and celebrate with the community. For those who can't make it on July 12 or are unable to spend 8 hours, alternate options are in place. You can do the marathon in two parts over the next week on your own schedule. Join us! |
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February 2026
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