Experience the Joy of Ekphrastic Poetry!
Thursday, August 27, 5:00-6:30pm
Registration: $20
If you love words and art, the ancient form of “ekphrastic” (art-inspired) poetry is a rich field of inspiration and collaboration for telling our stories and describing our experiences through poems. As a poet, visual artist and founder of The Poartry Project, instructor JC Wayne’s special mission is making poetry accessible by helping people find the “poet within” that lives inside all of us. Taking a painting as our muse, we’ll open the door to creative inspiration and unblock common beliefs that poetry is intimidating, hard or takes some kind of almost magical natural skill that can’t be learned by writing a poem inspired by the art of Gallery 46 artist, Cynthia Rosen.
As a special bonus, Cynthia will be in attendance to answer questions and share her inspiration and creative process around the painting(s) we’ll be writing about. Through concrete examples of different types of ekphrastic poems, the rare gift of being able to speak with the artist whose work is serving as our muse and the unique opportunity to engage with poetry in an accessible way, you will come away from this workshop with the joy and confidence of having written a poem that celebrates both words and art through your unique perspective and voice.
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About JC Wayne
JC Wayne is a poet, visual artist, “book doula” and founder of The Poartry Project, whose mission is “building loving worlds through loving words”. She is founder and host of the internationally-livestreamed Voicing Art Poetry Reading Series in Burlington, Vermont; poetry adventure guide of Plein Air Poetry of Nature Walks; creator of the Free Little Poetry Project; and a poetry mentor at King Street Center. She recently released her first book of poetry, “Voicing Art”, and has been awarded a Livable Cities Initiative grant by the City of New Haven for her “Loving Heart for Healthy Communities” project. She got her formal education in International Relations and Art History at Brown, Harvard and Tufts Universities, but she considers her travel to 49 US states (and counting) and 23 countries a greatest source of gaining wisdom and a care for community service that makes poetry, art and storytelling welcoming and accessible to all. Her work can be found at poartry.org.