Ekphrasis: Poems and Art
Image Credit: Cathleen Cohen
Welcome to a new Mad Poets blog, to be offered every two months.
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. Here are opportunities of interest:
Hearing the Brush: The Painting and Poetry of Warren and Jane Rohrer
Woodmere Art Museum 04/09/2022 - 07/10/2022
I highly recommend a visit to this exhibit, which pairs Warren Rohrer’s paintings with the poetry of Jane Rohrer, his wife. Raised in different agricultural Mennonite communities, they met in college, wed and purchased Christiana Farm in Lancaster County, near to where Warren was born. Warren became one of the leading abstract painters of Philadelphia, exhibiting and teaching widely.
Both members of the couple explored their shared Mennonite roots as well as their artistic development as they broadened their experiences, traveled, studied and eventually moving to Chestnut Hill. Both retained deep ties to the land, a source of inspiration and connection with their ancestors.
Warren’s works seems composed of gestural marks depicting images of pastures, boundaries and water through a deeply personal alphabet. Jane’s elegant poems document her development, experience of domestic life and intimacy. She is also a keen observer of her husband’s process.
I hear the little whiskers
of the brush
crossing
the canvas
He follows
as a farmer pursues
the furrow plowing
left to right left to right left to right
the hush metaphor a shared landscape
See
Jane Rohrer
The Woodmere exhibition is revelatory, pairing Jane’s poems with Warren’s work. They vibrate side-by-side along the walls. They’re not place this way so that the poems explain the paintings. Rather, poems and paintings converse, as we might suppose the couple conversed.
I was taken with the spaciousness inherent in the work of both partners. So much is suggested as well as obscured. I could feel the couple’s intimacy, impact upon each other and connection.
Upcoming Workshops- Here are some online and in-person which might be of interest.
Writing ekphrastic poems with Jessica Jacobs
June 21, 2-4 pm ET (both online & in-person): With the Fine Arts Work Center, Jessica will offer "Talking to the Walls: Writing Ekphrastic Poetry." In this workshop, we’ll explore different pathways into the deep conversations available to us with visual art and its creators. Ideal for writers and artists of all levels of experience, our time together will be primarily generative and designed to give you news to appreciate art and get you writing.
Writing and painting with Cathleen Cohen
These two separate offerings are geared towards folks who are interested in drawing or painting as well as poetry. No worries if you’ve never taken a drawing or painting course before! The explorations we take up will be engaging and accessible. My aim is for each of us to deepen our process.
July 9 (outdoors, in-person) Cerulean Arts Gallery
Do you jot down writings as you paint? Or maybe you have an ongoing writing practice. Join poet and artist Cathleen Cohen and explore the link between painting and poetry. Deepen and expand your creative process even if you've never written a poem before! Make your artist statement more engaging! Draw and paint with watercolor and write in response to helpful prompts in a supportive environment. Examine how artists like Jean Arp, Kenneth Patchen and Wassily Kandinsky linked the written word and visual art. All levels welcome.
(online and recorded 11/29-12/20), Penn Studio School of Arts
Poetry has been written by many visual artists, past and present (e.g., William Blake, Wassily Kandinsky, Kenneth Patchen, Kansuke Yamamoto, Zachary Schomburg). They can inspire us. I’ll demo my own watercolor painting approach, but you can use any media you like for in-class exercises.
We will use simple, helpful prompts to learn about the craft of writing poems. We’ll experiment and match language to images we create. We’ll try ekphrasis (poems that describe works of art). This can open us up to writing about others’ artwork, having others write about ours and writing about our own.
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.