Ekphrastic Writing Challenge: Barbara Danin

Cadmium Sea, by Barbara Danin (USA) Contemporary. Click image for artist website.

​Ekphrastic Writing Challenge:  Barbara Danin

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. 

The prompt this time is Cadmium Sea, by Barbara Danin. Deadline is October 18, 2019.
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We welcome guest editor Tina Barry, who chose this artwork by Barbara Danin.

Guest editor's note:

I’d like to see writing that relates to Barbara Danin’s collage, Cadmium Sea, but takes me somewhere unexpected. My taste is eclectic. I appreciate a strong sense of place, vivid imagery, and rich yet well-honed language. If you want to throw a twist in somewhere, please do; humour, if it suits the writing, is always appreciated.  Having said that, I’m not a fan of rhyming poems, unless the rhymes are subtle. No poems over two pages. Shorter is better, but no haikus. Keep prose to 500 words. Thanks in advance. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Best,
Tina

Guest editor bio: Tina Barry is a poet, short story writer and curator. She is the author of Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016), and Beautiful Raft, prose poems and flash fiction about Virginia Haggard and Jean McNeil, the artist Marc Chagall’s lover and her daughter (Big Table Publishing, fall 2019). Several pieces in Beautiful Raft served as the backbone for “The Virginia Project” (2018-2019), a traveling exhibition created, written and curated by Tina. The collaborative exhibit featured 14 women artists who each interpreted a different piece of Tina’s writing. Tina’s work appears in numerous journals and anthologies, including Drunken Boat, Inch Magazine, Yes, Poetry, Connotation Press, The American Poetry Journal, The Best Short Fictions 2016, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, and A Constellation of Kisses. Tina is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has had several Best of the Net nods. She teaches poetry and short fiction at The Poetry Barn and Gemini Ink.

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. Please copy and paste your submission into the body of the email, even if you include an attachment such as Word or PDF.

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 DANIN WRITING CHALLENGE in the subject line 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, October 18, 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!