Do you want to jumpstart vivid and effective imagery in your poems? Imagery (anything you can see/hear/taste/touch/smell lends verisimilitude (“life-likeness”) to your poetry. Using other works of fine art can give you a jumping-off place, something to help you both describe and react to what you are seeing and feeling. We will read some famous ekphrastic poems (poems that are inspired by other works of art). I will share my ekphrastic poems and then you will try your hand at your own poem based on another work of art. The act of creating involves intensely focusing on the subject. Dorothea Lange said, “Art is an act of attention.” So art is someone’s intensely focused work which we will use to hone our focus!
How does inspiration flow from one medium to another? How do poets work with images and themes they encounter in visual or musical art forms? Finding language to evoke and confront a painting, a sculpture, or a photograph is challenging because you want to do more than merely describe the art; you want to react to it and see where else it takes you. Remember, no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader! Doing this should enhance your use of the concrete world of imagery that surrounds us to write better poems!
Location: Zoom Virtual Event
Price: $30 members/$45 for nonmembers
Age: 16+
Materials Needed: Access to writing tools (pen and paper or computer/laptop)
About the Teaching Artist:
Raphael Kosek is our very own Dutchess County Poet Laureate for 2019-2020 and she has been an adjunct English professor at both DCC and Marist for 15 years. Her latest chapbook, Rough Grace won the 2014 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize and her book, American Mythology was a finalist at Brick Road Poetry Press and published in 2019. Her poems and lyric essays have been widely published and have garnered prizes and Pushcart Prize nominations. She has written and published many poems inspired by the arts and has lead workshops in both high school and college to enhance the writing of poetry via art. She is a Vassar College graduate and has a Masters’s in American literature from Western Connecticut State University.