Ekphrasis is a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art. In this class we will look at ekphrasis poetry as a playful method of creative exploration. You might be a poet looking to expand your repertoire or a visual artist looking for a new way to write about your own work. Perhaps you are a novelist looking for innovative ways to investigate your main character, spark fictional world-building, or tackle writer’s block. Maybe you are just curious about how visual art and poetry can feed each other. Explore historical and contemporary examples before discussing different ways of approaching writing about a visual image. A variety of examples are provided for you to choose from, or you can bring in your images. The interdisciplinary focus of this class includes collaborative and individual writing time to leave you with a first draft or a finished work, but most especially, the tools and inspiration to create more.

This class is taught by a graduate student in the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s MFA Program in Creative Writing.