Poetry After Dark: Latinx Ekphrasis--Poems Inspired by Visual Art Workshop

Poetry After Dark: Latinx Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop:

Ekphrastic poetry is simply poetry that is inspired by and in conversation with visual art. Scholar Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux in her book Twentieth-Century Poetry and the Visual Arts speaks of the communitarian sense of collaboration that ekphrasis can be when a poet puts “the ekphrastic power of the word…to the service of connection that here and there, now and then, self and other not be isolated.” With such in mind, we will first discuss various approaches one may take to writing an ekphrastic poem, using examples of poems written by Latinx authors in response to Latinx visual art. Then from images supplied by the workshop facilitator, we will each choose a work of Latinx visual art that inspires, intrigues, puzzles, or moves us. Rather than simply describing the art, we will attempt to write poems that converse with, correspond with, or “riff off” of the art, using various prompts the facilitator has prepared to help us do so. We will work toward creating a third space where the dyad (the poem and art together) is something more or different than its parts—something, perhaps, unexpected!