 Automat, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1927. Liminality In a small Italian town in some quiet station cafe at a chequerboard tablecloth beside a vase of summer flowers in every hue of Welcome and Farewell, a pretty young woman in a scarlet blouse sits with head bowed in silent contemplation, entirely cloistered from the mayhem outside: a passing tram brimful of passengers; and market traders driving hard bargains with a blend of gesticulation and negotiation; a frieze of noise; backdrop of clamour that doesn't touch her. Undisturbed, she holds this space between arrival and departure beautifully. Janina Aza Karpinska Editor's Note: This poem was written in response to Italian Station Cafe (1952), by Robert Sawyers. You can see it by clicking here. The related but different image shown by Hopper was not the original source of the ekphrasis. Janina Aza Karpinska is an artist-poet with an M.A. In Creative Writing & Personal Development, Sussex University; Foundation in Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art & Design, and Foundation in Person-Centred Art Therapy, Crawley College. 1st Prize Winner of The Cannon Open Poetry Competition, 2007; published work in Poems in the Waiting Room; Museum Tales; and the Iron Book of Humorous Verse, and exhibited artwork in galleries, and magazines.
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 Untitled, by Omar Odeh (Canada, b. Iraq) 2011. Ekphrastic Writing Challenge
Join us for biweekly ekphrastic writing challenges. See why so many writers are hooked on ekphrastic! We feature some of the most accomplished influential poets writing today, and we also welcome emerging or first time writers and those who simply want to experience art in a deeper way or try something creative. Thank you to everyone who participated in our last writing challenge featuring the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which ends today at midnight. (Click here to see the Basquiat challenge.) Accepted responses for the Basquiat writing challenge will be published on March 1, 2019. The prompt this time is Untitled (Two Women With Cat), by Omar Odeh. Deadline is March 8, 2019. 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. 3. Have fun. 4. USE THIS EMAIL ONLY. Send your work to [email protected]. 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 OMAR ODEH WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line in all caps please. 6. Include your name and a brief bio. If you do not include your bio, it will not be included with your work, if accepted. Even if you have already written for The Ekphrastic Review or submitted other works and your bio is "on file" you must include it in your challenge submission. Do not send it after acceptance or later; it will not be added to your poem. Guest editors may not be familiar with your bio or have access to archives. We are sorry about these technicalities, but have found that following up, requesting, adding, and changing later takes too much time and is very confusing. 7. Late submissions will be discarded. Sorry. 8. Deadline is midnight, March 8, 2019. 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. Rinse and repeat with upcoming ekphrastic writing challenges! NEWS We have been featuring occasional guest editors for the ekphrastic challenges. We're hoping this will inspire us in unexpected ways, add new flavours and perspectives to the journal, foster community, and widen readership. Upcoming guest editors include Shirley Glubka, Joan Leotta, and Jordan Trethewey. We're excited about this and about having a whole year of challenges, now that we've found an ekphrastic prompt system that is working in terms of consistency and longevity. Many great poems are about to be written!  Snow at Louveciennes, by Alfred Sisley (France), 1878. Sisley’s Snow at Louveciennes We see white on white, a woman in the bleak centre of the canvas, this cold holding onto the rolling snow lying along the fences, tree limbs, hipped roofs, stone walls of the lost village. On a cottage door, a quiet blot of blue. Wrapped in a tatter of brown, the woman, deep in the landscape’s insistent flat, has the anonymity of a still life. She is your mother unable to return, staring into the blizzard’s dread beauty, seeing only the sky, a mute wash of blue hanging fragile, spare as the frozen air. She stands bordered by the indifference of daylight, imagines a cardinal cutting its wound across the snow, a cat crawling under a cottage, curling its tail around its sleep. Jack Ridl Jack Ridl's Practicing to Walk Like a Heron was named best collection of poetry for 2013 by Indiefab/ForeWord Reviews. His collection Broken Symmetry was selected by The Society of Midland Authors as the best collection of poetry for 2006. Billy Collins selected his Against Elegies for the Center for Book Arts (NYC) Chapbook Award. In April his new collection Saint Peter and the Goldfinch will be released. All three full collections are from Wayne State University Press.  Family Matters, by Alexandra de Kempf (Germany, b. Venezuela) 2011. Click image to visit artist site. Ten Steps to be Correctly Consumed by a City for Eric Norris dress like the person who plays you in the movie of your life; allow marks on your skin (but worry they’re usurping); body parts should become agents of commotion; act like you’re artisan, hand-drawn; stress like it’s an artform; bury the greenery of your accent in collage; learn to think inside the barrage of noise; be aware every moment each day is your choice; your life, a gesture you can’t quite hold onto; and nor should you. Mark Ward This poem first appeared in Headstuff. Mark Ward is the author of Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Assaracus, Tincture and many more, including some anthologies. He is the founding editor ofImpossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry. He blogs erratically athttp://astintinyourspotlight.wordpress.com  Atomic Bomb, by Andy Warhol (USA). 1965. On Warhol’s Atomic Bomb A 2013 study from the University of South Florida has found that psilocybin, the psychoactive component of magic mushrooms, is able to stimulate neurogenesis, which is the growth and repair of brain cells in the hippocampus…The implications of this study are that magic mushrooms…may also be a powerful treatment for PTSD and similar conditions. Wesley Thoricatha, “Psilocybin Shown to Heal and Repair Brain Cells, May Be Promising New PTSD Treatment” First, the mushroom defined as the colour explodes haunting, but not unpleasant drawing what is into what could've been A permanent positive A lasting image A piece of you, for you Then the flip you drop the first tab, the second drops like acid rain, like fallout drops the pretense drops the definition drops the reason for the pride drops We drop lines, plead “Please drop this, this unwanted, unasked for, these bodies dropped off planes dropped on plains, these plainclothes dropped in plain day dropped, just stop it, drop it, please!” This dream, nay, this nightmare, trips, fades into the background dark and I try to drop off to sleep. Cullen Whisenhunt Cullen Whisenhunt is a graduate student with Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program and an instructor of Developmental English at Murray State College in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. His work has been published in Red Earth Review, Dragon Poet Review, Manzano Mountain Review, Voices, Red River Review.  Love For a Street Walker, by Utamaro Kitagawa (Japan) 1790s. Wabi-Sabi Woman
Wabi Sabi: Deep awareness of life experienced through beautiful imperfection. “There is a comic verse which tells of one ... who is so cold on a winter night that she eats two bowls of noodles at 16 mon each, thus prodigally spending the 24 mon, her standard price which she got from her last client.” Cecilia Whitford, Japanese Prints Out of a perpetual twilight economy Utamaro’s* lovely Tsuji-gimi, could be Lilith, Eve, or Pandora but her name means “street corner whore,” the lowest kind of illegal prostitute who carries a straw mat over her arm for entertaining clients al fresco wherever she can find a nook, a quilt of shadow, to wrap its flimsy anonymity around her. No hint of certain real-world desperation; she is pillowbook playmate—sensual, slightly disheveled, headscarf edge held between perfect pink lips as she reaches in her belt for her purse. An also ran in the holy trinity of virgin, mother and crone, she is the stuff of demeaning jokes and wet dreams: Annie Fannie, Mattress-back, Backseat Bimbo, the imperfect wabi-sabi woman, making the best of the floating world’s smallest, most broken boat, hoping for a little ease while tossed on poverty’s hopeless sea; but doing so, she transcends, becoming the every woman all women carry inside. Sandra J. Lindow * Utamaro Kitagawa 1750-1806 This poem was first published in Hot Metal Press. Sandra J. Lindow lives on a hilltop in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where she teaches, writes, edits, and competes with wildlife for rights to her vegetables and perennials. She has six books of poetry.  The Marriage Feast at Cana, traditionally attributed to Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands), after 1550. The Marriage Feast at Cana
"You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather than an asset." Marianne Moore Nary a flask of new wine from the hand of the Savior could bring a flush of happiness to her cheek. She would be like the water, transformed in miraculous fashion to fruit before it is plucked. Like the plates of the revelers, she is empty, picked clean. Were that a woman like a man instead of a fatted calf displayed before the market, pinched and prodded for plumpness, good bones and pink flesh her undoing. Janette Schafer Janette Schafer is a freelance writer and photographer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a 2017 awardee of the Maenad Fellowship in writing through Chatham University and a 2015 awardee of the Arts MODE Fellowship in experimental theater through New Sun Rising LLC. Recent and upcoming publications include: (b)oink Magazine; Nasty Women & Bad Hombres Anthology; Chatham University broadsides; PublicSource; Calamus Journal.  Demonic Puppets, by Paul Klee (Switzerland). 1929. Demonic Puppets
I I guide the demons inside of me with words, not strings, silent commands and an iron hand to curb their avarice, calm their cruelty and subdue their lust; I, their master, and they the marionettes. II We are the demons that live inside of him moving his lips to speak our unspeakable words and guiding his restless mind and limbs to perform indescribable acts-- watch the master with no will of his own bow and cower to our law. Neil Ellman Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,200 ekphrastic poems, in venues throughout the world. He has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.  Christ and The Woman Taken in Adultery, by Pieter Bruegel (Netherlands) 1565. bruegel the elder’s the woman taken in adultery how ironic this bare foot Jesus writes (in dutch no less) His sentence for her sin that is really theirs as she stands among the judges, jury, executioners . . . please note the lack of two formal witnesses the Law proscribed as well as her male counterpart who conveniently disappeared what will become of her will she speak again after her enforced silence and will some future husband lay with her to rob her of her sorrow and her public shame Sister Lou Ella Sister Lou Ella is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannnan Walker, Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin, Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Her first book of poetry entitled she: robed and wordless was published in 2015 (Press 53.)  La Vecchia Sapienza, Rome, by Francesco Borromini, 1642-1660, photograph by ildirettore (CC BY 3.0) Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza These are not days of grace. In the morning we wake to the half-heard sound of shouting out in the street. On the pale walls the sunlight spills careless, caresses from the paint and blistered window-frames outrageous beauty. Fixing the low gas stove with a broken lighter you start to tell me how the girls in EUR charge twenty-five euros for a hand-job. I do not believe that you know this, but I can’t unpick the lies within the lies, and so we smoke in silence and drink coffee from last night’s vodka glasses. When the day is right, we go to Sant'Ivo, which, of course, is closed except on Sunday mornings, when we sleep late. Outside in the Roman street prevaricating between the traffic and god, we hesitate. The squared curves of the courtyard beckon and repulse: o wisdom, wisdom – is this still your world? Sophy Downes A Cambridge native, Sophy lives in Rome, where she teaches archaeology by day, writes by night, and stalks the Romantic poets whenever she can. |
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