This single session zoom with Women on Writing! will provide an overview of the variety of flash fiction genres and forms. 

Friday, April 10 at 3 pm eastern time. 

Click image above or link below for more info or to register.

​https://wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_FlashFiction.html

Starting next Monday, April 13, we start a very special four week course on photography and ekphrasis, with London Arts Based Research Centre.

Click image above or link below for more info or to register.

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/londonartsbasedresearchcentremethodsltd/2083232
​

Join us on Tuesday April 14 for our monthly generative writing session for ekphrastic addicts. This zoom session will feature a curated lineup of diverse artworks and we will write to four to six art prompts together.

Click image above or link below to register.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p187/Ekphrasis_Anonymous_April.html

Join us next Thursday for a Zoom on Leda and the Swan in art history. This ancient myth has inspired several millennia worth of paintings and sculptures, including some of the most beautiful works ever created, as well as art that is deeply disturbing. We will revisit the myth and discuss its various interpretations, and themes of desire, deception, violation, and destiny.

Click on image above or link below for registration and info.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p195/Leda_and_the_Swan%3A_art%2C_myth%2C_poetry.html

Join us for a unique asynchronous weekend workshop immersed in the music of legendary songwriter Lucinda Williams. We'll be looking at her songs, her relationship to poets and poetry, and visual art on themes in her songs.

We'll work independently. Lorette will offer feedback on your stories or poems. We'll wrap up the weekend with a Champagne Zoom party to celebrate.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p196/World_Gone_Wrong%3A_poetry_and_flash_inspired_by_Lucinda_Williams.html
​

Creative Writing with Surrealist Art is a four week course with Women on Writing! 

​https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_SurrealistWriting.html

A special two-part session immersed in the poetry, music, and art of Leonard Cohen.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p204/Dance_Me_to_the_End_of_Love%3A_the_art%2C_poetry%2C_and_music_of_Leonard_Cohen.html

In this zoom session we will look at the story of women in abstract art, and use their work to inspire our own poems or stories.

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p203/Abstract_Women.html

Join us for a session on the Impressionists!

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p202/Writing_with_The_Impressionists.html

Join us to discover the joy of ekphrastic haibun!

​https://www.ekphrastic.net/store/p205/Ekphrastic_Haibun.html

An Ekphrasis for Margaret Grace
 
Your image incises my favourite intaglio print,
massive, at four-by-two to your four-eleven,
red lines bleeding into the blueness of you
 
the curling into a womb robbed 
of a baby you weren’t allowed to know,
a baby you’d search for 
in every room 
but never find.
 
And the men who consumed you,
hungry for your delicate lines,
for your soft curls,
for life leaking like light 
from the violet glint of your eyes.
 
I wonder, sinking 
into your saturated cloud, 
shaped by a rounded tarlatan rag, 
a whisper looping in swift, precise circles across 
the four-by-two plate, by your sister’s hands,
first etched in her synapses decades before,
now bleeding in archival ink,
on archival paper,
you, an archive lost, an archive held.
 
You: fourteen, in an attic, and already mourning.

Abigail Card
 
Abigail Card holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State University and is the Managing Editor for Cider Press Review. Her work is published or forthcoming in Cimarron Review, For Women Who Roar, Bending Genres, and others. Her work centres around dismantling the silencing of women, unraveling grief, and exploring neurodivergence through the lens of voice. When she isn’t writing, she’s usually tromping through old-growth forests, curled up with coffee, or traveling with her family. She currently resides on the coast of Maine.
.

Hi Readers of The Ekphrastic Review,

This is my fifth year contributing to The Ekphrastic Review challenges.  Ekphrastic writing, and in fact any kind of "after" writing, has always appealed to me, and both feature in my mini chapbook due to be published late 2026.  I've always enjoyed reading the Review - challenge responses or otherwise - so it's such a pleasure to delve into the archives.  All the pieces I've picked here are from the first half of 2022 and all but the last one have a theme relating to family.

Emily Tee

**

My Last Can of Tomato Soup, by Gayle Moran

Gayle takes a wry look at life through the lens of pop culture, inspired by Warhol's Tomato Soup can. 

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/my-last-can-of-tomato-soup-by-gayle-moran

**

Three Sisters, by Helena Feder

So much left unsaid by Helena in this brilliant short piece, but it's there between the lines.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/three-sisters-by-helena-feder

**

When I married you, I didn't know you were a werewolf, by Benjamin Niespodziany

This really demonstrates the special power of prose poetry in surreal and haunting words by Benjamin.  One to revel in the reading and re-reading.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/when-i-married-you-i-didnt-know-you-were-a-werewolf-by-benjamin-niespodziany

**

One Sleep, by Claire Bateman

Claire offers us a suitably deep and probing psychological examination of one of Andrew Wyeth's paintings, mesmerising in its brevity.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/one-sleep-by-claire-bateman

**

On Bhat, by Elsa Fischer

Watching the short video clip and then reading this made me cry - I'm still not entirely sure why.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/on-bhat-by-elsa-fischer

**

The Long Marriage, by Annaliese Jakimides

Beautiful, heartfelt words to a very unique piece of art.  Again, a short piece containing a lifetime's narrative.

Annaliese also supplied the artwork for one of the Ekphrastic Challenges (see the challenge archive for 10 October 2022 for the work and responses).

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/the-long-marriage-by-annaliese-jakimides

**

Say Uncle, by Roberta Beary

A powerful take on a complicated situation and family dynamic.

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/say-uncle-by-roberta-beary

**

The Re-Assignment of Tracey's Knickers, by Wilf Tilley

This one doesn't fit with my topic of family, but is one of the most memorable stories I've read here, and a personal favourite of mine.  It's a long read, but so worth it!

https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/the-re-assignment-of-traceys-knickers-by-wilf-tilley

**
​
Emily Tee is a poet and writer from the UK Midlands.  She particularly enjoys ekphrastic writing, and has had pieces in a variety of places on line and in print, including The Ekphrastic Review.  She judges a regular ekphrastic contest run by The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press.  She can be found on Instagram and Bluesky @emteepoetry

​When Annie Met Abel
 
He was big-boned and raw, dripping of sex, 
with a huge, homely nose perched below
 
hard North Sea eyes. Her cousin said
when he walked into a room every woman’s head
 
turned - even the married ones,
and he never passed up an opportunity.
 
She was fine-boned and fast, like a young Merlin falcon, 
inquisitive but untried, the haughty, almond-eyed
 
darling and first college grad in a family of Croatian
goat herders, who practiced vendetta while reciting The Lord’s Prayer.
 
He sailed from Holland in steerage, wearing the moral compass
of his erudite old man, a Calvinist preacher who methodically practiced
 
the Seven Deadly Sins.* They met in San Francisco and secretly
married just before the war. Her father said he’d only bring grief.
 
Which helps me understand her last Thanksgiving 
eighty years later on Telegraph Hill.
 
The Bay below was hazy and still. Our redwood
basked in fading sun, which bathed the old Crown-glass
 
windows in muted, wavering light. The scent of roasting turkey, 
rosemary and orange, circled our table of laughing souls,
 
including Annie’s son, his current and former wives,
the laid-back granddaughter, and a new baby boy.
 
Someone who didn’t know better, casually 
mentioned while passing her the Parker House rolls:
 
did you know he died last summer,
somewhere up the coast?
 
The earth stopped spinning for a brief
moment as her high-pitched Cassandra shriek*
 
shattered a black hole of silence,
sundered the bottle of Sandman Ruby Port,
 
bounced off the startled redwood tree, 
then echoed through the rain-soft city
 
like a dark wailing wind …
may he rot in hell forever, God damn his evil soul.
 
She turned wounded, naked eyes to me;
I blew her a kiss, nodded at my husband
 
her son, then passed her the pumpkin pie.
She smiled when I topped off her burgundy wine.
 
But nothing is ever that easy. Months later 
as she lay on her deathbed,
 
safe inside a mellow, Morpheus dream, 
she held my hand, pulled me close,
 
then murmured in my ear:
I’m not really the first wife.
 
He was the husband of my best friend Katija,
who I lost forever because of my sin.
 
I was the second of seven wives. He was a spider’s
thread sailing on the wind: - it was never real.
 
Donna Carnes

**
​
Editor's notes:

This poem was inspired by Steamer Dock, 1920s, by John Tayson (USA) before 2020.
https://patch.com/connecticut/groton/mystic-seaport-marine-art-exhibit-opening-soon-0

Author's notes:

*The Seven Deadly Sins: In AD 590 Pope Gregory I revised the list of Seven Deadly sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy,and Pride), which is still used today in Catholicism and Protestantism, including Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist denominations.
 
Cassandra: In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a prophetess and princess of Troy, cursed by Apollo to always prophesize the truthbut never be believed. She often predicted impending doom, such as the fall of Troy.

​Donna Carnes is an imagist, en plein air poet. She writes in diverse poetic forms, including freestyle, villanelle, pantoum, sonnet, haiku and haibun. Her poetry is shaped by the geography and culture of her childhood and adult life. Carnes was born in Chicago, Ill., spent her toddler years in the Pacific Northwest, and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. She studied and worked in England for several years, and lived for decades in San Francisco, CA. She particularly enjoys plein air writing in winter light and during the end-of-day blue hour. Over the past 18 years, Carnes’ poems have been in numerous exhibits with artists, in articles, and in radio interviews and poetry readings. Her most recent book is All About the Light, Poems & Paintings (Donna Carnes poet and Jan Norsetter painter; Two Goddesses Press, November, 2024). 

Laurence Carr and Power Boothe, Traverse. Lightwoodpress, 2022

What ensues when text and image reflect across an open binding? When a poem breaks its own rules for the betterment of knowing? When a pair captures randomness between the covers and something new is born? Traverse the transom of this book, revising abstraction into worlds and words, and your own mind may reveal a perspective conceived in spirit and laid out in blocks of exotic wisdom.

In Traverse (Lightwoodpress 2022) Laurence Carr and Power Boothe playfully present mirrored blocks on facing pages: brief eight-line lyrics by Carr set against 8 x 8-inch grids painted or drawn by Boothe. Poet and painter demonstrate the generative force of placing word and image in conversation then inviting the reader/viewer in to explore meanings that emerge. Sometimes Carr’s poems or “micro-essays,” blank a line or dangle over the octet limit; sometimes Boothe slants or smears his checkerboard, but neither ever leaves the box.

Carved from mica quartz, 
the presentational chest 
is offered to visitors of rank. 
The cup-shaped interior is filled
with the juice of the uchasa berry, 
known for its soothing properties
and is said to bring on 
waking dreams.                                               (52)
 
What do such ritual ceremonies do, but place us in time and space, according to calendars and coordinates we have devised? These mini-incantations act accordingly, as they evoke captured moments and place them side-by-side. Cosmologies of being include creation myths, a fascination with female generative power, and the squares and circles that enclose and anchor the human to the universe. As Hawthorne assured, “a single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities” and Carr and Boothe deliver. Earth mother conceives; the moon goddess monitors energy flow from earth to celestial arch. There is a fascination with the seen and the unseen, with what lies just below the surface: lost skin tattoos “found through micro-surge excavation” (28) or lower layers that generate the radiance of “skinglow” (38). Such dips into depth seem to deepen the shadow and pop on their complementary pages from Boothe’s sketchbook, to intensify 3D effects on the flat page. 

The poet’s ear for assonantal sonic patterns - astral travel, gnat’s eyelash, dental garlands, gender destiny of the unbornmake for ritual myths of echoing sound: yet another aspect that weaves the words and swirls together. These combinations, illuminated by their aural identities, highlight recurring gestures of the book including journeys, sweeping changes in scale, the unexpected perspective, and ceremonies around sex and star tracking. The visual works engage a range of media and combine the biomorphic with the geometric in map-like renditions that tend toward full abstraction. Lines thicken to tubes to intensify origami effects – but there it is again… the words dictating interpretation; the shaded sections rising to comply.

Time is measured in units of forever, as if to rival Prufrock’s coffee spoons with cat whiskers and tables unfolding right down to the solipsistic moment where visions appear and the lyric ends:

words forming lips
the song
that sings itself (8)
 
The number eight peppers the book. And the selected cipher occasionally appears in fractions of two and four, as in the Bear-Husk headdress with four rows of upper and lower teeth (30). Or in light speed’s 2x2x2 multiple of full awareness (32). Ultimately, the perfectly square volume feels like a meditative mathematician’s daybook, an ode to the I Ching, or a farmer’s almanac with a cosmic vision.

When the first aporia appears as a blank to break the 8-line fixed form and words sink invisibly into the wet sand of the floor plans, the reader enters in to complete the floating stanza (22). While bridges have been built from left-hand page to right, the entry into the white space of the paper may be even more challenging. Yet one has learned the rhythms of the work by this point, and familiar pattering makes it easier to complete the square. When Carr severs his poem so, the concluding couplet gives the look of a mini sonnet. He even goes fully graphic with slanted lines (///) that recall Boothe’s confident strokes (40; 98) and balances out the bleed of watercolour that tries the boundaries but never leaks. Or the poet wedges whiteness into a concrete poem with a triangular space that rises to empty out “that perpetual light within” (102).

The co-authors reveal that these are not traditional ekphrastics, artworks that take other artworks for their subject, such as Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” or John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.” Instead, these are opportunities for the audience’s discovery, arbitrary combinations in wait for the reader/viewer to decipher. While the first and last painting-and-poem combos were intentionally paired, each intervening couple was randomly assigned. Poet did not work with the paint drying on the page before him; painter did not take inspiration from the block of type presented. This means the reader/viewer is more radically implicated in the meaning-making process than ever. And, as Hawthorne would remind us, each act of interpretation reveals more about the consumer than it does about the collaborators who brought us these duets.
 
Sarah Wyman

Click on image above to view or purchase the book on Amazon.

Sarah Wyman lives in the Hudson Valley and writes and teaches about literature and the visual arts at SUNY New Paltz. She co-facilitates the Sustainability Learning Community and teaches poetry workshops at Shawangunk Prison. She is co-founder of earthrisecommons.org. Her poetry has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, aaduna, Mudfish, San Pedro River Review, Potomac Review, Lightwood, Heron Clan XI, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Poets of the Hudson Valley, and other venues. Her books are Sighted Stones (FLP 2018) and Fried Goldfinch (Codhill 2021). Website: https://hawksites.newpaltz.edu/sarahwyman/

Cézanne, The Pond 
 
Looks like spring has arrived 
on my Cézanne calendar. 
She often makes fun of me, 
asks who has a wall calendar
anymore, but this morning, 
a Monday, when it’s back to 
work, I look at these couples 
lounging on the grass by a pond,
and find myself somewhere in 
the French countryside. One man 
lies down, hat covering his face, 
his lady leaning over him, as if 
about to whisper something dirty, 
his right hand raised toward me, 
all but one finger blurred by 
brushstrokes, which I’m certain
is the middle one.

Clint Margrave

Clint Margrave is the author of the poetry collections Salute the Wreckage, The Early Death of Men, and most recently, Visitor, all from NYQ Books. He is also the author of the novel Lying Bastard and editor of Requiem for the Toad: Selected Poems of Gerald Locklin (NYQ Books). His work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Sun, Rattle, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. He recently served as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Bulgaria, living in Sofia, and teaching creative writing at Sofia University.

If you’ve been staring at a blank page all week, this is a gentle nudge.

I’m teaching a small live Zoom workshop with Litro Magazine starting 9 April: The Joy of Ekphrasis - writing from art as a practical way to generate fresh material quickly.

It’s capped at 15 so it stays hands-on and supportive. If you want structure, prompts, and a real push to draft new work, you’ll like it.

Link: https://www.litromagazine.com/masterclasses/courses/joy-of-ekphrasis/
​
Hope to see you there!

Lorette

Wrath

Mighty waves lash out at the craggy shore,
strong gusts bend trees against their will,
giant cliffs loom over the restless waters,
the tide is menacing and nothing is still!

Loud and thunderous, the skies rage on,
violent is the storm and cold is the breeze,
streaks of lightning strike the highest rock
when small pieces fall into unsettling seas.

Sunlight has abandoned all hours of day,
the boats overturn with shattered masts,
massive waves weather the bare rock face,
the cliffs are sprayed with rain-filled blasts.

When Poseidon unleashes his deadly wrath,
deep darkness descends and shuns all light;
rising and falling against the rugged shore,
the dark waves break into dazzling white.

Billowing gray clouds amass over the seas,
severing the coast from the warmth of day;
swelling waves approach with frantic haste,
devouring mammoth rocks along its way.

The earth trembles and the heaven shakes,
unnerving the waves of the troubled seas;
terrible is the wrath of the surging tide,
crushing sail-boats and uprooting trees!

Leah Chrestien

Leah Chrestien is a Machine Learning engineer by profession, who lives in Prague and writes poetry in her free time. Her poems have appeared multiple times in Our Daily Poem, Westward Quarterly, Leading Edge Magazine, Spillwords, and The Raven Review. Her personal blog can be found at theecstaticstoryteller.blog.