Most people think ekphrastic poetry is writing about a work of art, but modern ekphrasism uses the artwork as a mere starting point.

In this 3-hour workshop, we’ll look at examples of traditional and modern ekphrastic poems and discuss the thinking behind them, thereby open up possibilities for writing about art. We’ll then take to the gallery and do some writing, where the personal and the everyday will weave its way into the threads of the artwork.

Heather Taylor-Johnson

Heather Taylor-Johnson is a multi-form writer living and working on Kaurna land near Port Adelaide. She’s the author of five poetry collections and a verse novel and has had poems published in various Best of Australian Poetry anthologies. The anthology she edited, Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of Chronic Illness and Pain, was the winner of the Mascara Avant Garde Award. Her essays have won Island’s Nonfiction Prize and been shortlisted for ABR’s Calibre Prize, while her novel Jean Harley was Here was shortlisted for the Readings Prize for New Fiction. She’s an arts critic and an honorary title holder at the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide.