As a reminder, the Revolutionary Poets Society focuses on global opportunities to respond to the demands of the moment through poetry, music and art. We focus on the development of vocabulary and a set of critical, literacy, and performance approaches to help enable engagement with slam poems and spoken-word poems on aesthetic terms.
The current syllabus for this class is available here. I’m using this website to serve as my learning management system and share all materials. I hope you’ll join us over the coming weeks as we think, discuss, and write.
We’ll use the hashtag #RevolutionaryPoets to organize all materials across social media (mostly Twitter). I’ll encourage my students to share materials and follow along on the discussion there. Please join us.
In our first make, we started with where I begin. In our second make, we talked about where I’m from. Now…let’s get to the third make! 🙂
Consider
You’ve probably heard that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
The challenge is that in a social media age we spend so much time creating and sharing photos before almost instantly moving on to the next image. No matter how heavily filtered, posed, and photoshopped the images may be, they grab our attention for an instant and then we move on. Many times, a thousand words…let alone one can be much more calculated and share more than the happiest, most perfect, cleverly captioned content that comes across our devices each day.
Part of this is because there are many ways to interpret a picture.
There are also may possible interpretations to give of an image, or to voice your interpretation. In the content of this work with the Revolutionary Poets Society, how might poetry be used to present your interpretation of an image? How can powerful photography and poetry, together, be used to make personal connections with local and global communities and issues?
To make sense of this, we’ll study the creation of ekphrastic poems.
An ekphrastic poem is poem that responds to a work of visual art—generally a painting, sculpture, or photograph. Ekphrasis is a Greek word that translates to description, but contemporary ekphrastic poems usually go beyond description to speak to or from the perspective of the artwork/its subject(s). Find more examples of ekphrastic poems here.
Recognizing the details
Look at the pieces in this photo essay. Please note, the photo essay focuses on gun violence in Chicago. If the subject matter is too challenging, you can select another series from this list of Pulitzer Prize winners.
Alternatively, you may also visit an art museum and (if allowed) take photos of some of the exhibits for response in this make.
Individually, or in small groups, look at the photos in a collection without reading the captions.
What themes emerge? What feelings do the photos evoke? Write them down. Then, read the captions. Does the added information change or add to your list. Finally, discuss with a partner: How can the themes present in these photos connect with your life?
Now…write an ekphrastic poem.
1. Select the photo / themes with which you connect most. Read the photo’s caption and as much of the accompanying text as possible to get some background in the story the photo is telling. See the end of this lesson for suggested photos and accompanying texts.
2. Brainstorm the perspectives from which you could write your poem. Choose one, and then choose 1-2 themes you want to explore from this perspective.
3. Write your poem. Write at least seven sets of couplets. The only requirement is that your poem respond to the photo you chose by engaging with its story, themes, and/or visual content.
If you feel like you’re stuck…try some of these techniques to get started:
- Start by describing the photo. In addition to visual description, tell your reader about the smells, the sounds, the textures. Then, take us beyond the frame: what lies there? What isn’t pictured?
- Choose a small detail in the photo, and write from its perspective. What is it doing in the photo? What is its history? What does it have to say about the themes of the photo at large?
- Writing in couplets (rhymed or unrhymed) that follow the pattern: “Portrait of _____.” / “Not a portrait of _______.”
This make is modified from this resource from the Pulitzer Center.
