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EKPHRASIS: BEYOND DESCRIPTION 5-week poetry workshop w/ Jennifer Franklin

Instructor: Jennifer Franklin

This workshop takes place at Bowery Poetry Club on the following Sundays from 12PM-2PM

March 12
March 19
March 26
April 2
April 9

In this workshop, we will write a series of ekphrastic (from the Greek, to speak out, to tell in full) poems. Since Homer described Achilles shield in the Iliad, Western poetry has had a tradition of responding to art. This workshop will examine ekphrasis on a deeper level than the occasional tool for writers block. The emphasis is your poetry but I will provide examples of how the form is used to explore personal, political, and social issues. More than honing language of description, students will learn the nuances writing about art. Photography, graffiti, outsider art, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, and literature will be open to mine. Sometimes considered a form dominated by male poets, we will read work by Griffiths, Fragos, Brock-Broido, and Cruz that will help shatter that stereotype as we compose a short manuscript over the five weeks. Bring a poem based on another work of art to the first class.

Jennifer Franklin is the author of Looming (Elixir Press, 2015). She teaches at The Hudson Valley Writers Center, is coeditor of Slapering Hol Press, and lives in New York City.