EKPHRASTIC WRITING CHALLENGE: Ancient Egyptian Funerary Boat

Model of Paddling Boat, Funerary Boat Being Rowed, Egypt, Tomb of Meketre, ca. 1981–1975 B.C.

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Ekphrastic Writing Challenge

Thank you to everyone who participated in our last writing challenge featuring the work of Joseph Cornell, which ends today at midnight. Accepted responses for the Cornell challenge will be published on February 1, 2019. A very special thank you to Bill Waters, who was our guest editor for this challenge. 

The prompt this time is an ancient Egyptian Funerary Boat. Deadline is February 8, 2019.

A great big welcome to our guest editor for this week's challenge, Alarie Tennille.

A message to you from Alarie: "Hello, writers! I can’t wait to see how you will surprise me with this challenge. Isn’t it fun to see how many directions we can go using the same prompt? Many thanks to Lorette Luzajic for bringing poetry and art together in The Ekphrastic Review. I’m delighted to be a regular contributor and now a guest editor.

My parents didn’t realize I was legally blind until I was four and a half. With glasses, I could finally see! I began to record my new world on paper, first by drawing and later by writing. For me, the arts have always been married."

Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, with a genius older brother destined for NASA, a ghost, and a yard full of cats. She graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. Retired now, she has lived more than half her life in Kansas City, Missouri, where she serves on the Emeritus Board of The Writers Place. Please check out her books and new blog at alariepoet.com.

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.

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 EGYPTIAN 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 editor's 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 February 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 are so happy to have Alarie Tennille with us for this prompt, and excited about other guest editors judging some of the challenges in the year ahead! In the near future we welcome Devon Balwit and Shirley Glubka.

We're hoping this will inspire us in unexpected ways, add new flavours and perspectives to the journal, foster community, and widen readership.  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!

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