Another surprise. Today the Ekphrastic Review prompt responses are published, and my piece follows Merril’s poem! You can read them all here.
Thank you Lorette C. Luzajic for selecting my prose piece.
Another surprise. Today the Ekphrastic Review prompt responses are published, and my piece follows Merril’s poem! You can read them all here.
Thank you Lorette C. Luzajic for selecting my prose piece.
What a pleasant surprise! Both Kerfe and I are featured in the Ekphastic Review’s Throwback Thursday feature. Thanks to the team at Ekphrastic for your support that just goes on giving!
My poem Oh, Jerusalem! is among the selection of tiger-themed works chosen for the Throwback Thursday feature in the Ekphrastic Review. Thank you, Paula Puolakka!
The Ekphrastic Review’s prompt this last fortnight was one that appealed to me. Not so much the painting, but what it suggested, which is the aim of ekphrasis after all.
One of my poems was selected, and it won’t come as a big surprise to learn that Kerfe also has a poem featured. You can read them both here.
I wrote these two poems for the Ekphrastic prompt and didn’t send them in, thinking they probably weren’t what was required. You can read the entries here.
Kohbar of Mithila, painting by Padma Shri Sita devi. Contemporary rendition of traditional Mithila style painting. Photo by Sumanjha1991. CC BY-SA 4.0
The sun shines today
Suns shine for you today,
and the lotus root springs high and virile,
and every moment of this day and the next
for ever and ever amen, the faces will watch,
and you hope they will smile,
not at your pleasure
but at your head bowed in duty
to the tall and mighty lotus root.
Make is swell and quiver, and the sun
will beam on its sprung seed,
or cover your head in the ashes
of consumed dreams
and weep for your lost wings.
A warning
Beware of smiling faces,
of tossed wishes and showered petals,
teeth bared in smiles of complicity
and thoughts only of the coming feast.
They are not for you, child,
they are for the respecting of tradition;
your desires, your pleasure
weigh less than a feather in the balance.
You are a bride not a woman
not even an adult, a child
with no mind of her own,
no right to choose.
Pick a face (they are all the same),
wear it on this day and forever,
painted and moulded like a mask
to cover your fears and your tears.
The painting prompt for the Ekphrastic Review challenge was a blue horse painting by Franz Marc. Anyone who knows my admiration for Marc won’t be surprised that I was duly prompted. Lorette asked for short fiction, which is what I wrote. You can read Horse Dreams here as well as all the other entries.
The latest painting to be inspired by was this portrait by Augustus John. I hadn’t heard of the marquesa, but after reading her story, I think this is a pretty sensitive portrait.
You can read my poem and the other selected poems here.
I have a poem up in the latest Ekphrastic challenge. The painting was this Berthe Morisot. Thanks to Alarie Tennille for choosing Weeds.
You can read all of the selected poems here.
This is the second poem I wrote to the prompt.
The name for despair is widow
More is lost than a lover, a father,
a way through the teaming city
built for men,
I lose a shield against misery,
a future for a girl child,
a cushion against cold pavement stone.
River flows golden in the evening sun,
pours over grey slate, colour of pigeons
in the soft light,
and I wish for wings to follow you,
watch the shoulder blades of the child
for their fledging.
Perhaps there will be more,
something of a life to be lived in this golden air,
not simply the dull dragging of the gutter.
The city of men laughs,
bright even beneath the clouds,
full of your absence.
One of my poems, The Poverty of the Affluent, was selected in the bi-weekly challenge at the Ekphrastic Review. The painting was this, Still Life, by Giorgio Morandi (Italy) 1956, which I like very much.
You can read all the selected poems here
The poem of mine in the review is the second one I wrote to the prompt. Below is the first one, which I think I prefer, though it doesn’t have the social commentary dimension of The Poverty of the Affluent.
Pane e vino
Pane e vino
and a round of cheese
in the end there’s not much more you need
chalk white and linen
the hush of a clean sparse interior
dark green glint of bottle glass
hot air billows over the sill
cool shadows where a cat watches
unblinking and voices murmur low
beneath the beat of the cicadas
and the milky-soft breathing
of a sleeping infant.
I have a poem in the Ekphrastic Review (first one of the published responses) and so does Merril! You can read them both here.
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