A Lyric Workshop: Imagery and Elegy, or How Ekphrastic Art Opens Grief

In this workshop, we will focus on the use of imagery to generate new writing and ways of conceiving the elegiac form. Through the device of ekphrastic writing, we will discuss traditional, as well as revolutionary, articulations of grief as it exists in its relationship to lyric poetry. We will try to reach new personal geographies within the realm of elegy by selecting and analyzing visual materials, such as paintings, sculpture, and primarily photography. We will pair literary and visual experiments in our search to grasp lyric poetry. Each student will select a visual artist and a poet to study throughout the course of the semester. Students will be expected to create original photographs, though no foundation or experience in photography is necessary or required. Please bring curiosity, intimacy, craft, and imagination each week. Students will also be expected to attend at least one poetry reading during the spring semester. A final folio of poetry and visual imagery will be submitted at the end of the semester.