EKPHRASTIC ENCOUNTERS

EKPHRASTIC ENCOUNTERS

The ekphrastic poem—one provoked by or in response a work of art—derives energy from the friction and affinities between two mediums and modes of experience: the visual and the verbal. As such, it can act as a vibrant site of experimentation and play, liminality and subversion. What transpires in the movement between one medium and another? What gets animated in the tensions between the spatial dimension of a visual artwork and the temporal dimension of a poem? How can ekphrastic writing proceed as a mode of inquiry, a manner of investigating perception and process? Together, we’ll read through an invigorating range of poems that emerge from varied approaches to ekphrasis, partake in generative writing, and discuss one another's ekphrastic poems.PROVISIONAL READING LIST (*May be subject to change): Ekphrastic poems by W.H. Auden, Eduardo Corral, Victoria Chang, Tolu Agbelusi, Albert Goldbarth, Jorie Graham, Brian Teare, Robin Coste Lewis, Robert Hayden

BIO: Jenny Xie was born in Anhui province, China. She is the author of Eye Level, a finalist for the National Book Award and the recipient of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and The Rupture Tense, a finalist for the National Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Award, and a recipient of the Josephine Miles Award. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Kundiman, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Vilcek Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. She has taught at Princeton and NYU, and is currently assistant professor of Written Arts at Bard College.