Announcement: Five Day Ekphrastic Microfiction Workshop with Lorette C. Luzajic and Meg Pokrass!!7/23/2021  The Ekphrastic Review editor Lorette C. Luzajic and editor of Best Microfiction Anthology Series Meg Pokrass are joining forces to teach a five day ekphrastic flash workshop in August. Click here for details. The workshop is now full! You can still email your interest to Meg so we can keep you informed.
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 The Poet, by Lily Prigioniero (Italy, b. USA) 2021 Click here or on image above to learn more or participate in the current ekphrastic writing challenge.
 South Carolina Morning, by Jean L. Kreiling Poet Jean L. Kreiling tries on Hopper's red dress. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/south-carolina-morning-by-jean-l-kreiling ** White Flag, by Alexis Rhone Fancher Alexis Rhone Fancher travels back in time with her photographer's eye. www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/white-flag-by-alexis-rhone-fancher ** Ekphrastic Writing Responses on Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper One of our most popular challenges ever. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/ekphrastic-writing-responses-edward-hopper ** In a Western Motel, by Nan Wigington Flash fiction on Hopper by one of our first place contest winners. www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/in-a-western-motel-by-nan-wigington ** Reflecting on Loneliness, by Lorette C. Luzajic An essay by yours truly on solitude, loneliness, and being an introvert in an extroverted world. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/reflecting-on-loneliness-by-lorette-c-luzajic ** The Honey Hour, by Heloise Jones Flash fiction on the painter's Cape Cod Morning. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-honey-hour-by-heloise-jones ** The Paintings of Edward Hopper, by Michael Harmon Poet Michael Harmon on a number of works. www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/the-paintings-of-edward-hopper-by-michael-harmon ** Two Old Men and the Sea, by Lorette C. Luzajic Another essay by yours truly on Hopper and Turner, too. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/two-old-men-and-the-sea-by-lorette-c-luzajic ** The House By the Railroad, by Mark A. Murphy Poet Mark A. Murphy visits the infamous haunted Hopper house. https://www.ekphrastic.net/ekphrastic-journal/house-by-the-railroad-by-mark-a-murphy Send us your favourites from our archive for Throwback Thursday! There are six years worth of writing at The Ekphrastic Review. With daily or more posts of poetry, fiction, and prose for most of that history, we have a wealth of talent to show off. We encourage readers to explore our archives by month and year in the sidebar. Click on a random selection and read through our history. Our Throwback Thursday features writing from our past, chosen on purpose or chosen randomly. Discover past contributors, work you missed, or responses to older ekphrastic challenges. Would you like to be a guest editor for a Throwback Thursday? Pick up to 10 favourite or random posts from the archives of The Ekphrastic Review. Use the format you see above: title, name of author, a sentence or two about your choice, and the link. Include a bio and if you wish, a note to readers about the Review, your relationship to the journal, ekphrastic writing in general, or any other relevant subject. Put THROWBACK THURSDAYS in the subject line and send to theekphrasticreview@gmail.com. Let's have some fun with this- along with your picks, send a vintage photo of yourself too!  Yours truly around 99, one of my very first art shows.  Shell, photography by Edward Weston (USA) 1927 Edward Weston, Shell (13S), 1927 Here is the curvature of the world. Slipping a hand into this porcelain moment, through the eye of that opening with its knife-edge strata folded like the anticline exposed in a roadcut, fingertips register a change in temperature. The gray interior is cool like an ocean cave at low tide. You hear the skittering of crabs and the slap of fish on water and something else retreating farther into the darker chambers. Your hand's shadow slides across the slick central column and you remember a woman's thigh rising from black sheets in a back room, you remember the arc of a man's arm reaching upward between sunflecked waves. Inside the shell is pearlsmooth like the wet lining of a mouth, and you curl your hand like a tongue against a cheek. Outside, tracing your thumb along the pinnacle is like testing the sharpness of a blade. You will bleed seawater from a gill-like slit, silver nitrate from a papercut. There is convex to this concave, surface to this depth: the disappearing curl of the outer shell rounds the spiraled shaft like a cresting wave encircling the trunk of a cypress, like mist swirling around a unicorn's horn. Your other hand reaches out to cup the swell, discovering in the rippled pattern a dry texture of sculpted sandstone. Now, you think, I possess. There is the distant click of the shutter, but the photograph will not hold your image holding the image of the shell, holding within its unseen images. Yet always you are there, one hand cradling, one hand penetrating, the body of a woman the body of a man like a musical instrument or a message in twists of light or the sound of the ocean retreating into the chambers of your ear. The image possesses you long after the flash fades and the shell begins its slow roll off the pedestal, carrying with it your own body painted on the cave wall, drawn in the patterns only the mollusk can interpret. Translated in the morning, imperfectly, like a dream. Carrie Naughton Carrie Naughton is a freelance bookkeeper who writes speculative fiction, nature essays, and poetry. Her work can be read at Strange Horizons, Zoomorphic, and Crab Creek Review. Her website is carrienaughton.com, and she writes an eclectic newsletter at CarrieThis.substack.com.  Photo by George Franklin, the author. Cuernavaca for Omar Villasana In the cathedral at Cuernavaca, fish Wait below the blue surface, teeth bared. A ship filled with samurai cruises above them, Each armed with machete or halberd-- Conquistador samurai—while captured missionaries Follow in another boat. Beyond the wooden Doors, afternoon turns the courtyard white. Vendors sell flowers, hats, toys, And across the narrow street, that’s us talking In the shade, drinking cold beer, Waiting for evening. Emperor Maximilian Bought a place here for his mistress. Bought May be too polite a word for it. The house was, As they say, a forced sale. It came complete with Gardens, cool in summer, mild in winter. They didn’t enjoy it for long. In the cathedral at Cuernavaca, on the stone above the heavy Wooden door, fish with sharp teeth Wait below the blue surface Of the sea. The boat filled with samurai Never moves. George Franklin Author's note: "The work that prompted the poem is the fresco in the cathedral at Cuernavaca of the captured Franciscan missionaries, including Felipe de Jesús, being taken by their samurai captors to their trial and crucifixion. They move over the surface of blue water containing some really nasty looking fish with teeth. This part of the fresco is above the door, and the water is painted on the underside of the entrance. The 17th century fresco was uncovered during a renovation of the cathedral. It had been completely forgotten." George Franklin is the author of four books, Noise of the World (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), Traveling for No Good Reason (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas (Katakana Editores), and Travels of the Angel of Sorrow (Blue Cedar Press). He is also the co-translator, along with the author, of Ximena Gómez's Último día/Last Day (Katakana Editores). More information can be found at https://gsfranklin.com/.  Guernica, by Pablo Picasso (Spain) 1937 Pablo Picasso’s Guernica The village’s been here, here where we’re standing by the Urdaibai estuary inscribed in the sand of skulls Octavio Vázquez's Piano trio no.1, "Gernika” a violinist, the cellist they play and there’s the church bell that rings during the Spanish Civil War it’s market day, in the main square where many people die when the bombs start to fall April 26,1937 a mural-sized oil painting in black, grey, and white matte monochrome come see a horse, and a bull come see the wailing women, the dead child. Ilona Martonfi This poem first appeared in Lantern Magazine. Read another ekphrastic poem by Ilona, on Georgio Morandi, here. (Scroll down) Ilona Martonfi is an editor, poet, curator, advocate and activist. Author of four poetry books, the most recent collection is Salt Bride (Inanna, 2019). Forthcoming, The Tempest (Inanna, 2022). Writes in journals, anthologies, and seven chapbooks. Her poem “Dachau on a Rainy Day” was nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize. Artistic director of Visual Arts Centre Reading Series and Argo Bookshop Reading Series. QWF 2010 Community Award.  Artwork by Jim Kemp (Canada) 1963 Becoming Foxfire in the marsh leads viewers further within, deeper into mires of mixed illusion, to the texture of coats applied layer upon layer. Fairy lights float through bright tangle, tempting me to follow those flames through impossible koan: "What is your original face before you were born?" Faux-fire, fool’s ghost among darkening shades-- how I wish I could meet you on that other side beyond saturated green in gathering tints of paint -- Turner’s red daub lighting your masterful flourish. Penn Kemp Editor's note: The painting is by the poet's father. Penn Kemp has participated in Canadian cultural life for over 50 years, writing, editing, and publishing poetry and plays. She has published 30 books of poetry, prose and drama and 10 CDs. Penn is the League’s 40th Life Member and Spoken Word Artist (2015). Penn’s new collection, A Near Memoir: new poems (Beliveau Books), launched on Earth Day. See www.pennkemp.wordpress.com and www.pennkemp.weebly.com.  Self-Portrait as Allegory of Painting, by Artemisia Gentileschi (Italy) c. 1638 Click here or on image above to find out the winners of our Women Artists ekphrastic writing contest!
 The Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci (Italy) 1490 I Think I Will Die splayed out in sepia on a cool sheet where toes and fingertips barely meet da Vinci’s square as if they’re made to fit where overlapped corners overreach rim of transparent circle revised by him to hold my four arms and four legs in Vishnu dancing limbs of pose-ability inked without error though contrarily by his sure left hand proportionately the palm measured with the fingers all counted ear to ear, knee to ankle, clavicle to crown in this tower of blocks I own so the children can play with my bones build bridges, towns, knock them down in symmetry Vitruvius found astounding the polymath Leonardo made exquisite with the sharp point of his compass at the center of a male body of no renown by moving it from umbilical knot on down to crux, apex, root, or a fuss between legs and sharp angles ending at the felt edge as by mime confined to imaginary cell or wingtips and wide skirts by snow-angel leaving vacant the half-moon overhead gap so that elbows can bend into perfect wrap for a square box sized to fit a round skull whose contents refuse this Vitruvian rule dying to puncture my shell’s demarcation to see in such constellations consolation. Jane McPhetres Johnson Jane McPhetres Johnson grew up in Colorado and commuted from Wyoming to Vermont’s Goddard College MFA. Her poems have been selected for local journals Straw Dogs, Picaflor Press, and Florence Poets Society, and for national e-journals and collections What Rough Beast, The Coil, and Not My President. In November 2020 she published Maven Reaches Mars: Home Poems and Space Probes in Four Fascicles. Jane lives in Amherst cohousing, is followed by fellow activists near and far on facebook and instagram, and follows her Kansan grandmother, who knew Emily’s poems by heart.  Too many of you have not yet discovered our ekphrastic podcast! The podcast was the vision of our contributor and Facebook page manager Brian A. Salmons. This week, Brian features work by Courtney Justus, Anthony DiMatteo, and Sara Eddy. This time, the poets are reading their own work. Many thanks to Brian for this amazing production. Please click on the image above for the current podcast. Click here to hear them all. You don't want to miss any! |
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November 2023
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