Introduction
Ekphrasis is an intermedial form of poetry inspired by or written about works of art or objects. Reading, interpreting, and writing ekphrastic poetry will be a new activity for my students – as it was for me too at the beginning of my work on this unit. Students will have had prior experience with visual art analysis and that will be a portion of the work we do in the classroom together. After all, how can you understand a poem about a work of art without first understanding the piece on which it is based? Relating a text back to a piece of visual art will be skill that requires modeling and practice.
William Blake, a Romantic Age poet, used ekphrasis to marry art and text in his now well-known collection of poems with engraved plates, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” You are likely familiar with his poem, “The Tyger.” In his book of illustrated poems, words and images are co-created to make a richer experience for the viewer/reader. My students will use this same concept in their work during this unit.
Because ekphrasis is an amalgam of art forms, it’s a natural way for students to make connections within disciplines. Ekphrastic poets “read” works of art and translate what they gleaned from those readings into poems. In this unit, students will become familiar with ekphrasis: how to read it, how to write it, and why we even bother.
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