Poetry – University of North Georgia Press

Writing Ekphrasis Poetry

Do you ever see a painting or photograph that speaks to you? An entire story that unfolds in your mind and begs you to write it?

Odds are you haven’t heard of ekphrasis poetry—not the technical name, anyway. Most of us don’t even know what the word ekphrasis means, but it’s likely you’ve read or written some ekphrastic poems in your life. Ekphrasis poetry is the vivid description of a scene or work of art. It’s not only description though. You often amplify and interpret the meaning of the artwork so much that a brand new world is created for the subject.

John Keats did it with “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which he created a life of dancing and music for a couple frozen in time on an urn. W.H. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles” is ekphrastic as well. He reimagined the events of Homer’s description of the shield in The Iliad. Countless others feel an overwhelming sense of inspiration to speak for and through works of art.

Writing an ekphrastic poem can be an easy start. Sometimes, it’s as simple as feeling inspired from any piece of art and putting pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard). If you want to write your own ekphrastic poems, here are some prompts to help inspire you:

Visit an art gallery or museum. Check out different exhibits and write about a specific work that catches your attention.
Do you follow your favorite artist on social media? Write a poem inspired by one of their Instagram photos.
Imagine van Gogh, Picasso, Dali, Kahlo—anyone!—have “lost works.” Write a poem about what you think their unseen paintings would look like. There could be a story there!
Pick a painting or photograph special to you and write different poems about it. Create a different scenario each time—the possibilities are endless.

Ekphrasis poetry is all about being inspired by other forms of art. Writing ekphrastic poems can help us elicit inspiration, overcome writer’s block, and simply have fun while writing. We don’t all have to write an ode to an urn like Keats did, but we should have just as much fun challenging our writing and creative processes. So, go on! Find a picture on Instagram and write about it. Write about a very Starry Night. Just write!

Poetry and Drama in the Renaissance

The Renaissance was an an awakening in Europe inspired by the reintroduction of Greek and Roman literature after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries, artists of all circumstances began experimenting and expressing themselves in new, distinct ways.

Two of the main artistic consequences of the Renaissance were poetry and drama. The arrival of the share of knowledge provided by the printing press coupled with the start of international trade, allowed people to widen their banks of information. The Renaissance period saw the rise of the middle class through education; more and more people had the opportunity to obtain an education. Therefore, poetry and drama were no longer intended for just the privileged. Poetry and drama became shared artistic concepts among all classes because of the newfound influx of information.

Poetry in the Renaissance became one of the most valued forms of literature and was often accompanied by music. According to The Literature Network, the poetic forms most commonly employed during this period were the lyric, tragedy, elegy or pastoral. The goal of each poet was to capture the essence of beauty in the modern world, “the chief aim of English Renaissance verse was to encapsulate beauty and truth in words. English poetry of the period was ostentatious, repetitious, and often betrayed a subtle wit” (The Literature Network, 2017). One of the most significant poems written during this time is the epic Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667). According to Referatele, the purpose of this epic was to communicate the reasoning behind God’s decision involving Adam and Eve’s fall from Eden and to “express the central Christian truths of freedom, sin, and redemption as he conceived .” Milton expressed this point in the poem, “I may assert eternal providence, / And justify the ways of God to men (Line 26).

William Shakespeare dominated the English drama arena during the Renaissance. Shakespeare’s ability to alternate between different genres, comedy and tragedy, while continuously teaching a profound lesson is what set him apart from the rest. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a tragedy in which a noble soldier goes rogue with greed, killing several people; he does all of this because of a prophesy. In the end, nothing yet everything goes as planned. Shakespeare attempts to warn audiences against fooling with fate. Shakespeare is regarded as one of the greatest playrights and even created several words in the English language. However, much of Shakespeare’s life is unknown; there are gaps of time when Shakespeare’s presence is absent from society. To learn more about his life, read the University of North Georgia Press’s biography.

The developments of poetry and drama are significant to the era as a whole as they added a new form of entertainment and source of information to all of the classes.

What is your favorite Shakespeare play and why?

Welcome Visiting Spanish Authors

Join us in welcoming our Spanish-speaking authors to the University of North Georgia. At noon on November 8^th we will be hosting a book reading and signing at the Starbucks in the Chestatee building. Come for the poetry and free refreshments.

Meet Benjamín Prado, a well-known novelist and author of Shelter from the Storm, Fernando Valverde, author of Eyes of the Pelican, Andrea Cote Botero, one of the contributors to Poetry Facing Uncertainty, and the translator of all three works: Dr. Gordon McNeer. All three books will be available for purchase.

Going to the 2013 SAMLA conference? You can also catch them there at 6:15 pm at the Augusta Room.

For more information about this event, check out this article from UNG News.

The Creativity of the Crowd

The Crowdsourced Poetry Project is under way! We have three lines so far and are excited to see more contributions to our sestina. Go to our Facebook page to submit your contribution for the next line. Our poem so far:

I began to ask myself the questions
With answers hanging in the air
What is here is noise, above which we can hear

For those of you who don’t already know, the Press is doing an experiment in creativity where we are hoping to harness the wisdom and imagination of the public to create a stunning poem. We have chosen to use the sestina for our form, mostly because it requires no rhyming or syllable counting, making it more accessible to contributors, while its use of repeated end-words gives it just enough complexity and structure so that it won’t spin off into a wild dervish. A sestina is a poem of six stanzas that are each six lines long and then a final, three line envoi. The stanzas all end with the same six words as the first stanza, though in a very specific order. In “Sestina: Altaforte” Ezra Pound uses these words at the ends of the first six lines: peace, music, clash, opposing, crimson, and rejoicing. According to the form they reappear in the second stanza in a new order as: rejoicing, peace, crimson, music, opposing, and clash, and so on throughout the next four stanzas. The repetition of these words both allows and forces the writer to use them in new ways and with new meaning imbued each time, creating a rich tapestry of language where the pattern continues to reveal itself throughout. Please join us in our quest to crowdsource a poem; the results are sure to be interesting and possibly very beautiful indeed.

A Sestina by Everyone

A few weeks ago I was talking with some colleagues about the changing face of literature. Everyone knows about e-readers and online publications by now, and even blogs are getting a lot of attention. We started talking about an author who is writing a novel one chapter at a time, publishing it online like a blog, and then getting her readership to send her input on what should happen next. She then takes all that input and writes the next chapter. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book but in real time. The author is literally catering to her own, specific audience. Joking, I said, “Can you imagine writing poetry that way? Gross.” Because poetry is so personal, so visceral, there’s no way it could ever be written by a group of random, loosely strung-together strangers, I thought. But the idea of a crowdsourced poem had gotten into my head and it wouldn’t get out. What if we did compose a poem with a bunch of random, loosely strung-together strangers? What would happen to the creativity level? The personal aspect? Could it be done?

To understand what we’re talking about, it may be necessary to take a couple of steps back and actually define what crowdsourcing is and how it’s been used in the past. Crowdsourcing is a method of outsourcing work that is thought to get better results by spreading the work around to as many people as possible, especially people who are not necessarily specialized in a particular skill. The idea is that while expert knowledge is held by a few, wisdom is held in the collective conscience. The term crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe in an article for Wired Magazine in 2006, but the method itself can be dated much farther back in history. The editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, Sir James A. H. Murray, faced with the daunting task of recording and defining every word in the English language from Middle English forward, as well as finding the earliest known examples of each, put out an “Appeal to the English-Speaking and English-Reading Public” asking anyone who was willing to read works of English and gather data for this huge etymological endeavor. These contributors would then send in slips of paper for each word researched and Murray and his colleagues compiled the lot of them into the most extensive dictionary we have to date. The more people you have working on a project the more input you get, and, with an intellectual endeavor, as opposed to a mathematical or scientific one, more and varied input is valuable. But, what about with a creative or an artistic endeavor? Will the crowd’s wisdom be a contribution to the work or will it detract from it, leaving you with an unfocused, overreaching mess? I have decided to find out.

Over the next several weeks my colleague Victoria Capaldi and I will be driving a new project that, for now, we are calling “The Crowdsourced Poetry Project.” We, as in Victoria and I and you and anyone who chooses to take part, will be writing a poem, one line at a time, together. To do it we will post a single line on our facebook page, and then in the comments we will accept submissions for the next line. As the comments come in, Victoria and I will be compiling and editing the submissions, and each time a new line is chosen we will post it and accept for submissions for the next line. For our form we have chosen a sestina, originally a French form of poetry divided into 6 sestets (six line stanzas) and 1 triplet called an envoi, a concluding stanza half the size of the rest. The distinguishing feature of a sestina is that the words ending each line in the first stanza are repeated as the end words for the other six stanzas in a specific order: ABCDEFG, FAEBDC, CFDABE, ECBFAD, DEACFB, BDFECA, (envoi) ECA or ACE. One excellent example is “Sestina” by Charles Algernon Swinburne, reprinted below. While he chose to rhyme his end words, it is not required. Some other notable examples are “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sestina/) and SIX by Charlotte Mandel (http://winningwriters.com/resources/critiques/2010/urc_1005mandel.php#.UdruFG12GM1) .

Stay tuned to our page at https://www.facebook.com/UPNGA to take part in this exciting and terrifying new project.

Sestina by Charles Algernon Swinburne

I saw my soul at rest upon a day
As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
And knew not as men waking, of delight.

This was the measure of my soul’s delight;
It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
And all the love and life that sleepers may.

But such life’s triumph as men waking may
It might not have to feed its faint delight
Between the stars by night and sun by day,
Shut up with green leaves and a little light;
Because its way was as a lost star’s way,
A world’s not wholly known of day or night.

All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night
Made it all music that such minstrels may,
And all they had they gave it of delight;
But in the full face of the fire of day
What place shall be for any starry light,
What part of heaven in all the wide sun’s way?

Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,
Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,
And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,
Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,
Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,
Nor more of song than they, nor more of light.

For who sleeps once and sees the secret light
Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way
Between the rise and rest of day and night,
Shall care no more to fare as all men may,
But be his place of pain or of delight,
There shall he dwell, beholding night as day.

Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light
Before the night be fallen across thy way;
Sing while he may, man hath no long delight.

This article was written with assistance from UPNG interns Victoria Capaldi and Patrick Brehe

Link-N-Blogs: May 10, 2013

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” -Leonardo da Vinci

Movies based on Poems: it seems like every other new movie that’s coming out is based on a book. But what about other forms of literature? In answer, Flavorwire has composed a list of ten great movies based on poems.
Libraries Seek Graphic Novels: Once considered a low form of literature, graphic novels are getting more and more popular and have now became the hottest section at many libraries. This Publisher’s Weekly article explores this phenomenon.
Shire Homes: Ever wanted to travel to the land of Middle-Earth and stay in a hobbit-hole? Well now you can. People all over the world have been creating their own little holes in the ground inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s peaceful locale. Io9 has put together this list of some examples.
Microsoft Looks into Nook: Microsoft has offered $1 billion to acquire Nook Media LLC. Check out this article from techcrunch.com for more details.
Isaac Newton’s Language: aside from being known for calculus and apple-related concussions, Sir Isaac Newton also wanted to shore-up language and create a universal tongue. See some examples of his words in this MentalFloss article.

“I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.” -J.R.R. Tolkien

Bag End hobbit hole from The Lord of the Rings movies http://lotr.wikia.com — Bag End hobbit hole from The Lord of the Rings movies
http://lotr.wikia.com

Stonepile Writers’ Anthology: Call for Submissions

We are now accepting submissions for Volume III of the Stonepile Anthology.

The Stonepile Writers is a writing group based in Northeast Georgia, and they would like to invite writers from every corner to submit their previously unpublished works. Send in your best poetry, prose, short stories, essays, short memoirs, creative non-fiction, etc. Please e-mail submissions to upng@northgeorgia.edu for review.

Please include all submissions as an attachment (doc or .docx are preferred, but we will accept pdf, rtx, and odt as well). Identify the type of writing (poetry, short story, etc) in the subject line of the e-mail. Please limit any submission to 4000 words. Each author is limited to submitting 5 poems and/or 2 short-stories/essays. Also, include your mailing address in the e-mail. The University Press of North Georgia retains first use copyright of material submitted. After publication, rights revert back to the author.

DEADLINE is May 3, 2013

Click here to read samples from Volumes I & II

From the Introduction to Volume I:

The Stonepile Writers Group began in Dahlonega, GA in 2007. It joins disparate talents, interests, and life-experiences, just as their region does. The group includes poets, traditional and free verse, nature-oriented and abstract. It includes fiction writers and memoirists, fantasists and steam-punkers. It includes professional writers and so-called amateurs, people from all walks of life: lawyers, bankers, librarians, engineers, instructors, soldiers, nurses, business developers, students, retirees, and more. These writers all share the creative impulse, commonly and uncommonly inspired by their shared home in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, with its red oaks, waterfalls, mountain laurels, and Cherokee markers.

Alice Sampson, Director of the Georgia Appalachian Studies Center, suggested the group’s name: “For several months while in graduate school, I passed Princess Trahlyta’s grave at Stonepile Gap, making my way up the mountain to Woody Gap School…It is also called Stonepile Gap.

“Here one pays respect to her by adding a rock to the Princess’s grave. I see our group as building a place that may be temporary as a pile of rocks, but it is of solid material and composed of individual contributions, plus the name is ‘place-based’.”

Stonepile Gap is the supposed burial site of Trahlyta, who is thought to be a legendary Cherokee Indian princess. Passersby customarily drop a stone on the grave for good luck.

This group’s members individually contribute to their self-, place-, and time-memorials, and are building their own marker on their shared “literary” landscape, reciprocating the deep marks – of joy, sorrow, triumph, and loss – that their landscape and region make on them. They add together poems and stories, like passersby add rocks to Trahlyta’s memorial, thereby building their community’s sense of place just as their community builds these writers’ sense of self.

Learn more about Trahlyta and the Stonepile, which gives the group and anthology it’s name, here.

This anthology is expected to be available for purchase in December 2013.