Ekphrasis as Portal into New Universes
Poetry Workshop ONLINE with Poet Jenifer DeBellis
In this online workshop, poet Jenifer DeBellis and participants will explore ways to develop new writing through ekphrastic reactions to works of art (like visual art, music, decorative art, architecture, classic literature, and performing arts). Consider ekphrasis a portal into a new universe. It invites writers to step into new, often unfamiliar, spaces, where there is a story or poem waiting to be told.
In its longstanding tradition, art offers creators a vehicle for creative expression that produces aesthetic experiences, matter, and environments meant to be shared and appreciated. In similar ways, ekphrasis offers creators well-crafted mediums with which to enter into new relationships. Ekphrasis is more than presenting an artwork’s detailed descriptions in a written work. Though these details are vital to the finished work that, by its use of this literary device, promises to reflect and react to the chosen art.
Writers in this workshop will learn ways to collaborate in relationship with works of art by entering the inspiration piece as one enters a room, environment, and/or experience to produce new prose and poetry.