Micheal, I enjoyed your poems especially the Rothko one with its chunk of text and stamping of color with repetition which made for an exciting read. The man who painted women is great writing, I love the command you demonstrate in it, and I agree with Jim the images don’t do it justice; if you could combine those images into one maybe it would.

John, I liked your Cain song poem, it created an image of its own for which the painting is clearly the inspiration and your words resembled the figures.

Jane
I realized while searching for an image, which was quite consuming on me, the possibilities of a more complete visual but all the tricks of digital art I don’t understand. The stone and eyes would be awesome forming into it, showing the stove working with a person or two fading in or out. I’d be up for any collaboration with it, nothing urgent of course. Thank you for the kind words.

I think maybe we might (if you're up for it) use this opportunity to start a poem/text thread (we did this in challenges a while back but for obvious reasons I'm keen to try to get the art forum moving if I can a bit).

The way these work is that I'll make a collage response to your poem, and then someone else might make a poem response to the collage response to your poem... if that makes sense and would work for you? Let me know, and if it does, I'll make an image response and post it in a separate thread!

Sarah-Jane

You have my Ok, and we can see where it goes

Descartes came up with I think therefore I am while sitting inside a stove, FWIW.

CHeers,
John

Crikey! Descartes sounds eccentric. He must have been limber, too.

Righty, just to update that I've made a very quick and quirky playful image in response to Jason's stove/stone poem and I'm going to post it in a different thread with a link back to this one. Cross your fingers for me that this plan works!

Sarah-Jane

Oh thank you John. I hope to slip that into a conversation sometime and see what the person says.

Sarah-Jane,
What a fantastic idea, to do a reverse-ekphrastic matching art to poem. Here’s a poem I never posted here or sent in or even considered worth revising, yet when seeking a poem that was expressed by a particular piece of art I love (and credit Mary Meriam for showing me), this was the only one that clicked for me, and suddenly I thought, tentatively, “maybe it’s not all that bad” so here goes:

Heartwrecked, Seeking Relief

Thoughts of you tucked softly just to cool the eye
when words like sticks and stones would scold the eye.

The radiance of your words, though disembodied, shines a way
where barbed-wire traps had ridiculed the eye.

The body finds a flightpath even without wings.
Even without you I feel your light, a jewel, the eye

I seek when my world whirls in madness and I’m lost.
Is this the center I can’t hold that fools the eye?

It’s neither place nor time, but emptiness—
a whole that never burns but rules the eye.

And yet I circle back, my mind in tow
to drink from your sweet nothing to console the eye.

I’m working hard to lose the word desire,
replace it with an aching that controls the eye

which always wanders through uncharted waters
with neither home nor anchor, something to hold the eye.

So I try smaller tasks and minor chords,
like mending seams to buttonhole the eye.

But naturally the heart will never yield its turf
to arrows that don’t pierce the soul, the eye.

The art is here

The poem was not written with this picture in mind at all, yet somehow I felt they spoke to each other.

Wow, Siham. What a beautiful ghazal. It's achingly good.

And the image is perfect (I'd recognised the sense and style of it as Odilon Redon, but it's not one I knew before you posted it).

They have such power together. There's a synthesis, a dialogue which isn't obvious but is very, very, much there.

One day, when I eventually retire (it'll be a good 20 years, sadly), my dream is to print limited edition broadsides. Poetry and art together. Some with QR codes that lead to readings or animations. With a remit of putting them in public spaces as well as sell for walls.

I hope you send the ghazal out there into the world, and if we're still posting on this board in 20 years time, expect a PM from me asking if I can make a broadside from it! Thank you so much for posting. I think it's a wonderful poem.

Sarah-Jane

Thanks so much, Sarah-Jane!
This thread is what inspired me to make this connection so I’m grateful for that. And I’m so relieved you like it. In fact I’ve been working on a set of photographs (mostly black and white) and poems to go together this way, working towards a (relatively) small chapbook. But it’s been easier said than done. Matching visuals to poetry is itself an art, and I’ve been inspired by what I’ve seen here thus far. Some fantastic poetry here really, and sometimes the art brings the poem out from the shadows. Your work has also inspired me.

Siham, that sounds like a gorgeous chapbook. It is very tricky, I think, to make images dialogue with poems in a way that adds to the meanings or reinforces key ones rather than reducing them.

If feedback is useful, please consider starting a thread here - you can always remove the links once the book gets sent out. If you need help with posting the images in a way that doesn't get them 'out there' for general consumption DM me and I'll see if/how I might help (once I'm back from an illustration shindig this pm).

Thank you so much for posting.

Sarah-Jane