​Painting 1946

In the foreground of his abattoir, with an oval of a silent-screaming mouth and eyes dark and sunken (as studied in Rembrandt’s self-portraits), the umbrella conceals the top of the figure’s face. In a black circumference, his bottom set of teeth protrude forward in a force of agony. Red gums. Red, pulsating muscle. 

The brute, the beauty of pink pigs raw and naked flesh. 

Veins in bone-white toile de Jouy map the entire canvas in ribbons of fat across the tendons of the crucifixion. Trotters raised. A spine cut out, placed on a silver plate of rounded steel inside the figure’s geometric entrapment. There is no room for sound but the frisson of a nervous system that has struck the canvas. He has imprisoned his subject within the seduction of oil-on-linen. 

Lucy Wright

Lucy Wright is a third year PhD Candidate in Leeds. Her research and fiction centres around the works of Francis Bacon, and the significance of Modernism(s) and Ekphrasis in the process of his prolific artwork. Originally from the North East, Lucy now lives and teaches workshops on the importance of the Arts in Yorkshire for national organisations. She also occasionally writes articles for the Modernist Review and other journals alongside her love for ekphrastic poetry. 

About to Disappear
Robbi Nester
Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025
https://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/mno/NESTER_DISAPPEAR.html

​The Ekphrastic Review: Tell us about your inspirations for this book and how the collection came together.

Robbi Nester: For a long time (probably 8-10 years) it was just a pile of poems, one of two such piles of ekphrastic poems I have written over the years. 

I always aspired to make a book of them, but found that this was not as easy as I’d thought. For me, organizing collections has always been a challenge, despite the fact that this is my fourth full length collection and the fifth book of poems.

I have also edited three anthologies, and they were far easier to put together because the concept came first, and then the submissions, and over the course of reading the hundreds of pieces that came in, I became quite clear on what I wanted from the books. But manuscripts generally don’t work that way for me, or haven’t thus far.

I’ve always had an interest in hybridity, combining different modes of art, poetry and music, poetry and art, but I was making up the rules as I went along, so it was painfully hard. I didn’t have many other models to go by since I didn’t know about them, except for those written by my friend, Marly Youmans. We met at Hollins College (now Hollins University) as undergraduates, and I followed her work, featuring the work of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, a Welsh artist who illustrated her books and collaborated with her.

I, on the other hand, have collaborated with many artists, drawn to famous images and those I saw online, or ones that were presented as online challenges by The Ekphrastic Review, Rattle’s Monthly Ekphrastic Challenge, and other places. I wrote more and more poems, but it wasn’t till I discussed this conundrum with poet and teacher, Dean Rader, who featured on one of the monthly readings I curate, Verse-Virtual Monthly Poetry Readings, that I got a practical sense of how this might be done.
After that, it took about a year of looking for an underlying theme in these poems, and letting that guide me. The key poem in the process was the first in the collection, "Some Assembly Required," which I had written for a competition at Meg Weston’s site and poetry series, The Poet’s Corner. Guided by the image and the poem, I began to see themes involving the pandemic, invention and creativity, transformation, and unmaking.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: When did you become interested in art? How did that relationship turn ekphrastic?

Robbi Nester: I was always drawn to art, but I didn’t live in a household in which it was an active part of life. Mine was a working-class family. My parents did not go to college and were not involved in artistic endeavours. My father did not even graduate from high school.

I was the only person I knew who aspired to be a writer, though I found out later that there were others all around me who were quietly pursuing similar things.
 
My great-uncle on my mother’s side happened to be a famous British poet of WWI and also equally famous as an artist, but he was tragically killed in WWI at age 26 near the end of the war.
 
My mother and her family were and are very proud of my great uncle, Isaac Rosenberg, and inspired by his example, a couple of my cousins pursued art and music. I am the only poet in the family I know of.
 
I was fortunate to live in Philadelphia, where I could visit the Art Museum and galleries around the city. And wherever I go, I always make an effort to visit local art museums.
 
This interest didn’t turn ekphrastic until quite late, when I was inspired by journals like The Ekphrastic Review, Broadsided, The Lights Ekphrastic, Rattle’s Ekphrastic challenge to write to what I saw in these artworks.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Is there a process or a way that you approach art to write about it?

Robbi Nester: Yes there is. I have thought about this quite a lot, and have found that my method is usually to study the artwork until questions about it begin to come into focus. These might involve the context of the work, certain prominent elements of it (why that colour, this composition, that central focus?) The poem is my attempt to answer those questions.

It all comes down to the story. I am a narrative poet. I see stories into things. When I was in high school, I tried taking a studio art class. I didn’t pursue this artistic training any further, but I remember one assignment the teacher gave us—to swirl a piece of heavy paper in different colours of paint and oil, producing a marbled surface. I immediately saw a figure emerging from the patterns on the paper, and outlined it in pen and ink.

My method in writing ekphrastic pieces is quite similar. I enjoy doing this with non-representational as well as representational images. And as I have become more and more practiced, I steer further away from what I know about the artist, the period, the work, and allow my invention to take hold. That is what you see happening in this collection. Sometimes the poems are quite the opposite of received views of the work or go against facts I know about it. They are as much about me as the artist or artwork, perhaps more.

The Ekphrastic Review: What kind of art are you most drawn to? What kind of art do you find difficult to write about?

Robbi Nester: I admire the way Victoria Chang writes poems about geometric or minimalist artworks, but that’s not for me, at least not so far.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Besides visual art, what kind of themes and ideas inspire your poetry in this collection?

Robbi Nester: Science, feminism and female psychology, climate change, biology, creativity and invention, political commentary.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: What is your favourite poem in the book and why? Is there a particular poem in this book that was challenging to write? Why? How did you transform the situation?

I find it difficult to choose favourites, whether poems of mine or others, artists, even a favourite poem in this collection. I enjoyed working with all of these images.
 
As I already said though, the first poem in the collection, “Some Assembly Required,” which had been published in MacQueen’s Quinterly as “Watching Pins,” was the one that helped me transform what was just a pile of poems into a cohesive manuscript. It made me aware of something that had been there all along: a theme related to making, shaping, and unmaking or falling apart.
 
The Ekphrastic Review: Who are some of your favourite poets working in ekphrasis? Why are you drawn to them?

Robbi Nester: I don’t know nearly enough about who is out there writing ekphrastic books. I see very few. We don’t have many physical bookstores where I live, especially those with large numbers of new poetry titles, and I don’t have a lot of disposable income or shelf space. Even commercial bookstores like Barnes and Noble have closed down here. And the public library, while it does carry poetry books, hasn’t had many books of this kind, perhaps none. And I doubt they will shelve mine, even if I give it to them.
 
The Internet, hosting and reading on virtual series and having connections who are writers, has taught me everything I know about ekphrastic poetry, but I still need to learn more. 
 
The Ekphrastic Review: What’s next for Robbi?

I have another trove of ekphrastic poems, some of which I like even better than the ones in this book, and next, I must study them and make a book of them. Also, I have a short manuscript of food-themed poems, Every Dish Requires a Death, that contains a small series of poems about some of the chefs in the Netflix shows The Chef’s Table and Street Food season 1, and a full-length general collection, I Have Lived in Many Houses currently seeking a home, and two other general collections with more recent poems I am still actively shaping.

**

​More from Robbi at The Ekphrastic Review:

Glove Model
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/glove-model-by-robbi-nester

Delusions of Grandeur
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/delusions-of-grandeur-by-robbi-nester

The Locusts
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/october-13th-20151

El Jaleo
https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/el-jaleo-by-robbi-nester

White Doors
​https://www.ekphrastic.net/the-ekphrastic-review/white-doors-by-robbi-nester

Χωρίς οδηγίες

Του έβγαλα βιαστικά το πουκάμισο, το έκανα μια μπάλα και το βούτηξα στον κουβά με την μπογιά. Πιτσίλισα τον τοίχο, τον καναπέ, το πάτωμα. Αυτός έκανε υπομονή. Μου θύμισε μία μία τις οδηγίες από το βίντεο που είδαμε μαζί online. «Είναι πανεύκολο», επαναλάμβανε ήρεμα. «Δεν μου βγαίνει», του είπα χωρίς να τον κοιτάξω. Έστυψα το πουκάμισο και στόχευσα ξανά τον τοίχο με μια απότομη κίνηση του καρπού μου. «Απλά βγάζεις το πουκάμισο, το βουτάς στην μπλε μπογιά και χτυπάς τον τοίχο. Μετά ζωγραφίζεις το υπόλοιπο. Kι όταν κάθεσαι στον καναπέ και φασώνεσαι, από πάνω σου δεσπόζει ένα πλάσμα του βυθού κι όχι ο λευκός τοίχος»! Δοκίμασα ξανά. Απλά μπλέχτηκαν όλα. Ένας κόμπος αντί για το πλάσμα υψώθηκε από πάνω μας. Ο κόμπος δεν είχε ούτε μάτια ούτε στόμα. Μας προκαλούσε να τον λύσουμε, χωρίς οδηγίες.

**

No Instructions Provided

I just took his shirt off. I crumpled it and dipped it in blue paint. I tried. I really did try.

It seemed easy at first. We started together, he and I. We watched a video about it online: you just take your shirt off, dip it in paint, and then spray the wall. So easy. Then, if you feel like it, you paint the rest. When you finish, you’re allowed to admire your work. You can even sit on the couch and make out.

Easy-peasy.

So naturalistic and vivid, a creature of the deep in my living room, watching us while he sticks his tongue down my throat.

So, I took his shirt off and dipped it in paint. It dripped all over the wall, the couch, the floor. I dipped a brush in another bucket. No luck.

He kept reminding me of the instructions in a soothing voice. “It’s easy. Don’t overthink,” he said. “Just follow the video we saw online.”

I gave it another try.  “It doesn’t work for me,” I said, without looking at him.

Everything ended up in a bundle: a knot instead of the creature was looming above our heads. Unfortunately, there was some distance between us. We weren’t making out, even though the instructions said we should.

The knot had no eyes, no mouth. And it seemed to be waiting for us to untangle it. And all this, with no instructions provided.
 
Maria Tsangari

The Greek version of this story previously appeared in Fractal.

Maria Tsangari lives in Nicosia, Cyprus, with her two cats, Sappho and Zozo. She works in local government by day and writes fiction by night—though she often neglects it more than she’d like to admit. Her short stories, written primarily in Greek, have appeared in various literary magazines and have received awards in Cyprus. She studied Classics at the University of Cyprus and Comparative Literature at University College London (UCL).

​
She Waits Among the Pottery and Rugs

She waits among the pottery and rugs, pensive,
staring at the two strangers with her father.
Neither has looked at her but she knows they
bargain. 
 
Tariq has built a thriving business in Cairo
with pottery, rugs and her lovely glowing body.
She knows the importance of her sensuality,
knows soon her price will be exacted.
 
At home, her family labours in clay and yarn
to supply the Cairo business. From dawn 
to dusk, the markets make gineih for their
owner, his family receiving nothing—not
 
even praise for their beautiful work. They
are given shekels for ingredients but
nothing for themselves except when one
of the daughters begins to see the beauty--
 
then, that young girl becomes the woman
of the family, traveling with her father for 
helping at the bazaar and soon becoming
inventory for the man from Cairo.

Jackie Langetieg

Jackie Langetieg has published poems in literary magazines: Verse Wisconsin, The Ekphrastic Review, Bramble Blue Heron Review. She’s won awards, such as WWA’s Jade Ring contest, Bards Chair, and Wisconsin Academy Poem of the Year. She is a regular contributor to the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. She has written five books of poems,  including Letter to My Daughter and a memoir, Filling the Cracks with Gold.

Join us for a three week course on writing through illness, starting November 6, with Women on Writing.

Creativity is a powerful way to consider our experiences of the turmoil of the body, and manage our journey through illness in ourselves and those we love. Exploring visual art, music, and literature on these themes brings us into community with others and an understanding of their experiences, while liberating us to express our own experiences in writing. Illness impacts our family, work, friendship, sexuality, mental health, spirituality, and more. Writing about our own struggles can strengthen our craft, allow us honest communication about our experiences, connect us to others, and enrich and empower us to live a full life despite the limits of our physical selves.


Participants can write poetry, non-fiction, short fiction, or any form that works for them. There will be room in each class for discussion about our experiences and our work. Content warning: this class will involve writing, art, and frank discussion on illness, grief, and the body.
Details and registration:
​https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/classroom/LoretteLuzajic_WritingThroughIllness.html

​
​Solar Music by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1955
 
I am interval lest we are clay walking home.
Create through musical vibrations.
 
No humans, aloud to my curious signs:
sunbeam, stringed instrument, bow 
 
across a shaft of light. I remove 
when from dust.
 
Octave laws vibrate invisible 
into a looking forum.
 
Star, ray, root.  I illuminate 
undergrowth and fractal nerve moss 
 
from the house of stars. Shatter
crystal cages and set the red birds free.
 

​Harmony by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1956
 
I cross the occult with invisible stitch work.
Crystals. Glass. I hear what I compose
 
from the beak of a bird from inside the red 
chair, flowers arise through the checkerboard floor.
 
Harmony tilts towards me. Leaf, pearl, prism, shell.
The mandrake root gives route to the access.
 
This higher order from the inner octave,
from scales nested in notes, from harmony’s 
 
underpinnings: the invisible thread that unites all things.
 

Witch Going to the Sabbath by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1957
 
Don’t say fire isn’t hair 
or bangs can’t be wings.
 
Alchemy to your dark 
heart is my dark heart, 
 
the want for filling.
My familiar purrs in smoke. 
 
Come close. Don’t touch.
I hold life between the legs.
 
In the realm of the syncretic, 
where infinite expands, creates--
 
the clit is my face.
 

Celestial Pablum by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1958
 
O caged crescent light,
inside everyone,
an escape hatch.
 
You’re the perfect fit, 
waning. Some say
I’m a two-handed sorcerer. 
 
I spoon feed you 
from light-grinding stars
while turning 
 
the machine’s cold handle.
Expanding, splitting 
seams in metal. You’re 
 
a wingless bird. When they 
say flight, I say blind.
To stand is to arc into galaxy.

​Still Life Reviving by Remedios Varo (Mexico, b. Spain) 1963
 
Flying pomegranates 
ripen when split.
 
Seeds fruit into plants
and the wild wind 
 
circles back. Breath
from the dead, levitation’s
 
not magic. Tablecloths
ache to become flying
 
carpets. At the centre
sits the candle, body
 
heat, my signature light.
Don’t fret.
  
Catherine Graham
 
Catherine Graham lives in the Haliburton Highlands. Her eighth book Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric was a finalist for the Trillium Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Award. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize and have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and CBC Radio. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected is her latest book. Moon Writing, a collaboration with Robert Frede Kenter, is forthcoming as is a poetry book inspired by the life and work of Remedios Varo (Wolsak and Wynn / Buckrider Books).

Bearing It

Bear with me, reader, like these sparkling mounds of rock 
withstanding the rush of water for who knows
how many millennia:
 
Just days ago, my family strolled the length of a swinging bridge,
a rust-red marvel strung across the Androscoggin,
not in the Pennsylvania wilds, but in coastal Maine,
and as the cables bore our weight with a rocking sway, 
we watched the rapids rage over glittering boulders.
 
It was then that this scene of the Loyalsock came to mind:
heaping layers of quartz-rich rock (like haystacks, yes) 
that once bore the futile blasts of dynamite 
by frustrated loggers.
 
Rugged shores line both bodies of water,
and the rods of anglers here and there
bear the writhing fight of small-mouth bass.
 
From that bridge, I saw a rock ever-surface like a whale,
dividing the water into white-capped currents,
while in this blue-green rendering
(yes, artist, I see it) a tawny sea turtle 
bears the torrent of waterfalls on every side.
 
Both waterways seek the sea, roiling on their way,
one bearing resemblance to the other
and mingling in my mind. 
 
I gladly bear the confusion
like a body of brackish water surging over, 
searching through the luminous rocks.

Shanna Powlus Wheeler

A previous contributor to The Ekphrastic Review, Shanna Powlus Wheeler has published two books of poetry, Lo & Behold and Evensong for Shadows. Her work appears in Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, an anthology recently published by Penn State University Press. She teaches writing courses at Pennsylvania College of Technology and lives with her husband and children near Williamsport, PA.

This course starts on Tuesday the 28 and runs for four weeks. Join us to discover the story of collage, and to start of expand your own journey of mixed media creation. Lorette is an award-winning mixed media artist whose work has been shown in galleries, museums, on textbook covers, on poetry book covers, on a billboard, in restaurants, laundromats, hotels, banks, corporate lobbies, and as props on film and television. She has collectors in forty countries.

We will talk about the variety of styles and expressions of collage in history and by luminaries of mixed media. We will do fun experiments and explore the fundamentals and diverse media. We will look at how to find your own voice and style.

This course was offered once to rave reviews, and this is the second run. It won't be offered again for some time.

All are welcome. Artists will find new inspiration and ideas for their practice. It's also perfect for this seeking a creative outlet or exploring different ways to enjoy art.

The course is on zoom, for $200 Canadian dollars, which is approximately $142 USD.