Our June workshop, led by Rick Sanders, was on ekphrastic poetry.
An ekphrastic poem is one that responds to a work of art, and who better to lead a workshop on art-inspired poetry than the mastermind behind PoArtry, an annual project that pairs up artists and poets at random to create new work?
Rick’s workshop was fun and intense. In two hours he had us writing 2-minute poems inspired by picture titles, inventing a character for a scene in a picture and writing a monologue in their voice, doing a free write and choosing a line from that as a starting point for a 28-word poem, and twisting a personal memory by adding an animal metaphor.
We all ended up with plenty of ideas and things to work on over the next few days and weeks.
Rick Sanders, aka Willis the Poet, is a comedy stand-up poet. He runs the annual PoArtry project and a monthly poetry slam event in Dudley and presents a monthly radio show called Brum Radio Poets. He has a collection out with Verve Poetry Press: The Top Secret Poetry Notebook of Willis the Poet
