Ekphrasis: Poems from Visual Art
Poets across time and culture have found inspiration in visual art, drawn into a conversation with these artworks and responding with fresh perspectives. This generative workshop will examine poetic models that employ different approaches to this kind of poem and use them as jumpstarts for our own poems to be written and discussed during the week. How can looking intensely at visual art help us grow as poets? What position can our own poems take in relation to the triggering subject? In this supportive environment, we’ll discover new techniques while exploring how artworks can act as mirrors and windows, offering both new images and new avenues into our imaginations. The instructor will provide feedback every day, along with a personalized letter to each participant at week’s end.
BIOGRAPHY
Paula Bohince is the author of three poetry collections, all from Sarabande. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, Granta, The TLS, and Best American Poetry. She has been the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar, the Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place, a Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Amy Clampitt House Resident Fellow, a Hawthornden Fellow, and a “Discovery”/The Nation Award recipient. She has taught at New York University, the New School, and elsewhere.