Ekphrasis: Poems and Art
Image Credit: Cathleen Cohen
Welcome to a new Mad Poets blog, to be offered quarterly.
It’s a pleasure to write about the relationship between poetry and other art forms, to examine ways that a various creative arts relate to each other.
The term ekphrasis can be defined narrowly as writing that describes a work of art in another medium-- paintings, music, photography sculpture and the like. It can also refer more broadly to the alchemy that happens when one medium tries to define and relate to another. This could refer to poems inspired by the visual arts or music -- and also the reverse! To my mind, ekphrasis can also encompass hybrid works, like artists’ books, author/illustrator collaborations and graphic poems.
Many scholars have written about ekphrasis and there are great resources online. Though not scholar of the topic, I have had a practice of writing poetry and painting for many years. Both are essential to my creative life. These art forms interact, challenge each other and open up many questions and tensions.
My aim in this blog is to feature the work of various poets and artists, to let you know of interesting viewing opportunities and to provide some angles that might prompt your own writing.
Each One Teach One: The Poetry and Art of Christina E. Johnson
A House A Home A Journey: Variation of Housetop, Christina E. Johnson
(Exhibited at “Celebrating the Quilts of Gee’s Bend”, Swarthmore College, 2018)
One of Philadelphia’s local gems is Christina E. Johnson, a talented fiber artist, teacher and poet who lives in West Philadelphia. To quote her, “My art challenges traditional and stereotypical edicts, encouraging individual empowerment with the hope of assisting women to use their voices and art for continued social change. I believe in the motto, ‘each one teach one and then pass it on.’ ” (Philadelphia Folklore Project).
Christina’s artwork incorporates traditional African-American quilting techniques, for which she received a grant to teach and study in Ghana with local artisans. True to her values, she has spent years teaching and sharing her art in Philadelphia schools, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and other places. She has used her talents to create quilts and other fiber art pieces for children and adults with cancer as well as individuals with HIV and Alzheimer’s. She founded the Quilters of the Round Table and co-founded the Southeastern Pennsylvania African American Quilt Documentation Project to survey the region’s African American quilters.
When asked how visual art and poetry interact for her, Christina shared, “When I am particularly moved by something, my mind starts going about what I want to say to the piece that says something to me. I let the fabric speak to me. It’s a dialogue; we are speaking to each other and speaking to the public.”
Christina’s work is interactive. She is inspired by others’ visual art to write poems and her fiber art has spurred others in this vein. What follows is a sampling of her poetry and art as well as others’ ekphrastic poems that she has inspired.
Hornet’s Nest, Warren Rohrer
Eye of the Storm
Swirling
Lifting objects too heavy for people to physically move
The air not contained by
Weather standards this time of year.
The Earth assaulted and wounded by an aerial attack
Round and round
Scary sounds, thumbing grinding and dissonant
The funnel, the funnel debris, water filled
Must land eventually
What damage done to all in view! Homes, cars, folks that could not hide.
Everything lost to a weather phenomenon
That strikes without warning and cares not for our fears or concerns.
No stability.
I am here.
Deal with me until I am gone
Only to return unexpectedly
Whenever.
Christina E. Johnson
Christina explores a variety of topics: family, aging and friendship as well as African-American history. She confided that for the first time she is being more political. Her quilt, “Mama Floyd” was recently accepted into a prestigious exhibit of African-American fiber arts (https://www.quiltmaniainc.us/content/uploads/2020/09/we_are_the_story_press_release_september_14_2020.pdf). “This quilt surprised me because it came from rage,” she said. Indeed, sharing it has led to deep discussions and sensitive writing by other poets.
Mama Floyd, Christina E. Johnson
Note to Mama Floyd
-after fiber art by Christina E. Johnson
Letters cut and stitched
like a ransom note, but no
this fading cry for Mama,
worth less than a twenty dollar bill,
blue knee unyielding as black asphalt
pressed against a neck.
These shreds of stitched fabric
shed as tears of another grieving mother
Justice never spelled at the grave.
Crowds gather flowers and signs
hard streets shout: Another Lynching!
Outrage and hope stir a courtroom,
a nation, whose unequal history
cries with the tragic gravity of bodies
begging the right to breathe.
Steve Pollack
George Washington’s Slave, Christina E. Johnson
Ona Judge, George Washington’s Seamstress Slave
Her face solemn
She watches, looking beyond the window
Where the wind has tossed aside the curtain.
She sees the road to be traveled.
Ready. Ready to move to a new home.
Her own home. A home without the
Hustle bustle of owners. Owners who bark orders.
Owners who do not pay. They just demand hours of hard
Menial work.
Though work she enjoys and will do when she is free.
Free to come and go
Free to charge so she might live.
There is luxury as she’s dressed for success.
She knows what she wants.
And the bird has sung. Gently, whispering a marching tune.
Christina E. Johnson
Blackbird Watching
(based on “George Washington’s Slave”, by Christina E. Johnson)
Blackbird watching from a sideways perch
Nameless creature within sight,
Let me listen to your silent song
Faceless soothsayer of night.
Buttoned, starched in proper dress
Cuffed for all to see,
Let me rise along your shadowed path
As I soar along with thee.
Blackbird warbling from a nearby branch
Open beak emits no sound,
Let me take your counsel deep within
Knees bent regally on ground.
Lace and trim I crisp for her
Fanning each appointed mark,
She is gowned, the lover known
While I await you in the dark.
Blackbird, teach me of your throated tune
Pray sing your song afield,
I’ll cloak you in my handiwork,
This craft I spin and wield.
Debby Swirsky-Sacchetti
Christina’s E. Johnson’s quilts have been exhibited at Art Sanctuary, the National Constitution Center, Swarthmore College, and Villanova University. She has received grants from the Leeway and Independence Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and others.
Here are more links to the work of this wonderful artist. If you are moved to respond to her artwork with your own poems, please send it along to cpoems@gmail.com.
www.Blurb.com/bookstore/detail/440229
Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia (www.theartwell.org). Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press), was published in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery. To learn more about her work, visit www.cathleencohenart.com.