Tripping the Light Ekphrastic
Dates: March 4-31 (Four weeks)
Format: Online Workshop (Asynchronous, more info)
The phrase "trip the light fantastic" means to dance nimbly or lightly. Ekphrastic poetry mines paintings, photographs, sculpture, etc., as fodder for crafting poems. In this generative poetry-writing workshop, we’ll be inspired by a variety of surrealist artists to stretch our comfort zones and become more nimble with our lexicon, syntax, and imagination.
Each week we will explore artworks created by artists such as Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Leonor Fini, and Dorothea Tanning. Selecting a work that resonates, you will be prompted to write a poem which pays homage to the artwork. We will explore a variety of approaches: you might write about the scene or subject the artwork depicts; in the voice of one or more persons in the art work; or simply about your experience of looking at the work of art, for example.
This workshop is open and suitable for writers of poetry, lyric essay, flash fiction, and prose poetry and/or for anyone who would like to try their hand at creating their own fantastic, ekphrastic written works.
Early Bird price ($295) is available through February 15. Regular price ($315) thereafter.
Image: “Red Vision,” by Leonor Fini 1984
Teaching Artist
Lissa Kiernan
Lissa Kiernan is the multiple award-winning author of two books of poetry (The Whispering Wall, 2023 & Two Faint Lines in the Violet, 2014) and one of prose (Glass Needles & Goose Quills, 2017). She founded and directs The Poetry Barn, a pollinator habitat for poetry and AIM Higher, a nonprofit serving artists and writers. She holds her MFA from the Stonecoast Program in Creative Writing and her MA from The New School in New York City. She lives with her husband, Chris Abramides, in the Catskills near the Ashokan Reservoir Spillway. More at lissakiernan.com.
