Divine Ekphrasis: Reading Art, Reading Self, Reading Soul with Sharon Dolin

Throughout the millennia, poets have been inspired by the visual arts as a way into reading the self and soul. This workshop will explore figurations of the soul through our numinous encounters with the visual. How can we create a dialogue with the visual arts that triggers an introspection of the self? Ekphrasis may have its roots in the art of description, but our focus will move beyond description into an enactment of Keatsian “soul-making.” Each poet is invited to choose a particular artist as their co-explorer on this journey, to create a sequence of poems in conversation with the works of that artist. We’ll read a selection of ekphrastic texts by contemporary poets that deploy various strategies for creating this ekphrastic moment.

Sharon Dolin is the author of five books, most recently Whirlwind and Burn and Dodge, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. Serious Pink, her groundbreaking ekphrastic collection in dialogue with abstract painting, is being reissued this fall. Her sixth full-length book of poems, Manual for Living, which contains two ekphrastic sequences, will be published in early 2016. She directs Writing About Art in Barcelona, a ten-day writing workshop each June, as well as the Center for Book Arts Annual Letterpress Poetry Chapbook Competition.

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