Approaches to the Ekphrastic with Jenny Xie (via Zoom)

The ekphrastic poem—one provoked by or in response a work of art—is a form that holds rich interior and surface tensions, deriving energy from the friction between two mediums and modes of experience: the visual and the verbal. As such, it can be a vibrant site of experimentation and play, liminality and subversion. How does a poem translate or spring from a visual artwork? What marks the constraints and possibilities of an ekphrastic poem? Together, we’ll read through an invigorating range of ekphrastic poems that emerge from different approaches to artwork, and generate ideas for future poems in response to several works of art.

NB: This craft class/generative workshop is capped at 12 and will be taught on Zoom. You will receive the link as soon as you register for class and in a reminder email the day before class. It will be sent to the email address you use to register so make sure you register with an email you check daily. Please check your spam folder if you do not receive it within five minutes of paying for the class. You must tell us if you register and then are not able to attend the class.

Jenny Xie was born in Anhui province, China. She is a two-time National Book Award finalist and the author of Eye Level (Graywolf), which received the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University, and The Rupture Tense (Graywolf, 2022). Xie has been supported by Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, and New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. She has taught at Princeton, NYU, and Bard College.