Members were very lucky to have two adjudicators for our January 2024 competition – our two speakers Dr. Kane Holborn and Antosh Wojcik. A wonderful new challenge was introduced by the poets in the form of ekphrasis. Both were very generous with their time and thoughts throughout the adjudication and feedback process.
Ekphrasis definition: the use of detailed description of a work of visual art as a literary device.
Introducing the task, Antosh said: “We’re going to broadly approach this type of writing. I see ekphrasis more as ‘creating a new piece of work from an existing work’ – so this prompt is slightly broader than the definition of the process.”
A detailed brief was provided as follows:
You are invited to write and submit an Ekphrastic piece of prose fiction, poetry, non-fiction or short essay.
- Choose three works of existing art. They can be from different artists or the same. They can vary in medium – you could choose a song, a painting, a film etc.
- Write a piece that draws from all three works.
- You could use the piece to comment on the works.
- You could write in response to the tones or the atmosphere of the pieces.
- You may choose figures within the work to narrate or feature within the work.
- You may derive settings from the soundscape/landscapes presented.
- You may use the three pieces as transitions – i.e. Vignettes drawing on each work, poem sequences etc.
All approaches welcome.
300 words for prose.
10-20 lines for poetry.
Antosh and Kane were both extremely generous with their time and thoughts on their winning entries. Both were agreed on the top three, but each chose their own highly commended recipient.
And the winners are…
First Place: The Piano Has Been Drinking at the Fountain in the Garden of Earthly Delights by Syd Meats
Second Place: Roche Court by Sam Christie
Third Place: I am Iago by Geraldine Bolam
Kane’s Highly Commended: Bedlam by Sarah Standage
Antosh’s Highly Commended: Please Do Not Propose by Francesco Sarti
First Place: The Piano Has Been Drinking at the Fountain in the Garden of Earthly Delights by Syd Meats
Delightful, leaping, irreverent verse! The poem reads as though we are shot through the ages of contemporary art, explosive and riotous with its explorations of image and undercutting of those images. The title does its dues to set up the concept and tonal resonance of the ensuing piece. I clapped upon reading. A riot of a read, superbly composed, well done!
Antosh Wojcik
I feel as though I’m in a gallery, observing sculptures and paintings as I read your work), (in particular, The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch) and this feeling emerges from the word go. Your poem mirrors the vigorous activities taking place within the painting. You throw image after image at your reader, assaulting their senses. From the juxtaposition of freezing rivers and cities on fire, you continue your fanciful poetic assault into your second stanza, not even giving us time to breathe. And this was what drew me back to your poem. Sublime madness at its finest! Methinks you are a Surrealist painter in disguise, masquerading as a poet. Job well done.
Dr Kane Holborn
The piano has been drinking, it staggers through its nightmare
from the left side of the triptych, where the duck-head man is reading
to the music of the buttocks played by instruments of torture.
And it frolics in the garden, riding unicorns and donkeys,
feeding strawberries and cherries to the bathers in the lake.
And the rivers are all freezing on the far side of the water
and the cities are on fire,
and the water is a bloodbath, and the rabbit bears a stretcher.
And the piano has been drinking in the stomach of the tree-man
and the giant bird-head monster makes a feast of all the corpses,
and the demons need urinals in the shape of Duchamp’s Fountain.
The piano has been dancing its four-legged wooden waltz.
And you can’t find your artwork at Grand Central Palace
and it hates you and the gallery, and you can’t find the toilet
and the porcelain’s an artwork and R Mutt has signed his name,
and the newspapers are scathing, and the critics have retired.
The piano has been drinking, it’s a sculpture ready made.
The urinal has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me.
Second Place: Roche Court by Sam Christie
In any ekphrastic work, a sense of place can be a powerful writing tool in
Dr Kane Holborn
conjuring the ekphrastic and you have eloquently framed your experience of a visit to Roche
Court supremely well. I especially loved the way you brought your poem to a close as this is often a delicate space to write within. But your trio of rhetorical devices offered me a refreshing perspective which brought your poem to a satisfying conclusion. Bravo.
A playful, dazzling poem, balanced in its introspection and leaps into the abstract!
I love a bold opening line; ‘They say I’m a sensation…’ It does the work of lighting the fire for the reader when the title is so quiet. What follows is this deftly considered, musical verse that purposefully drifts into the various named works and sensations.
Antosh Wojcik
They say I’m a sensation,
Though now I walk down from the ha ha
Following Richard Long’s bone flint Tame Buzzard Line,
Tapering towards the second life oak.
In the Orangery my work hangs
Among a tinkle of glasses and low frequency reverence.
These canvasses are not of the grey ashtray weep of Mosul,
But the proud, infinite Nineveh Plains.
I’m shoulder to shoulder
With van der Beugel’s DNA squares.
Though my code is in sand and the rumble of F15s,
His has settled as glass gallery reflections.
Belonging
Rolling green
Do they need me with them
As living, breathing context?
Am I also the art
As well as the artist?
Third Place: I am Iago by Geraldine Bolam
It’s wonderful to read a work that is confident in its fusion of form! Part-essay, part-poetic-prose, part-review, the reader is invited to navigate these various figments of Iago and reflect on the core themes of Shakespeare’s great work. I think it’s innovative to reach to such a text and bring its context into different life/light through the work you have selected and the vignette form gives this piece a sense of fluidity through time. I recommend building further on this work!
Antosh Wojcik
This piece is an interesting beast of creative writing because it treads many grounds in terms of genre. Is it a poem? Is it something else? I didn’t know. At times, your poetic lilt bled into the realm of review and, subsequently, nonfiction. But your piece was refreshing in that it had no discernible genre.
From ceramics at the V&A to Oliver Parker’s adaptation of Othello, you push the envelope and broaden the dimensions of your piece whilst maintaining your central theme: inspiration from the visual in a variety of forms.
Dr Kane Holborn
I am Iago. I am the mastermind of plot and subterfuge, the fulcrum at the centre of Shakespeare’s play. The Bard has given me immortality and my character has been endlessly speculated upon, my motives fully considered. “Demand me nothing” I had said. “What you know you know.” With the passage of time, I can be more helpful, but let art be my voice and your guide.
Let us start by looking at a piece of ceramic sculpture. The piece is Iago and Othello by Cyd Jupe. It is figurative, a wall piece of stoneware crank and red iron oxide. We are depicted as human heads, and I am whispering in Othello’s ear. It is a typical moment that captures our precious trust and intimacy. It reminds me of the time I discussed with Othello “Green Eyed Jealousy” and seeded some wisdom. Now let us consider a film.
How about Oliver Parker’s adaptation of Othello? He places me as a central witness to the action. There I am situated behind doors, peering into scenes, or hidden, all the while watching. The Director is masterful, look at the ingenious use of the chessboard anchoring my vital role. Some might say that it is Othello and Desdemona who are the chess pieces here and that I am the master operator. That is for you to decide.
So let us move on and try Othello the ballet by the American Ballet Theatre and the San Francisco Ballet. In one pivotal scene, we are returning from battle and the sailors are stretching and attaching ropes in preparation for docking. There are two groups of rope but within each group, tangles, and twists till they form an absolute web.
What I know about webs or being caught in one, I understand little, but I can say that the music is cleverly composed. The notes do not follow a straight line either but are equally discordant, complex, and twisted. I am simply entranced.
Kane’s Highly Commended: Bedlam by Sarah Standage
I am a lover of poetry that leaps off the page and which is up the wall, and your work certainly achieves this. Your engagement with Louis Wain’s psychedelic cats is quite evident through your zany use of language. I enjoy how the theme of mental health is mirrored against and through Wain’s visual work as an ekphrastic device within your poem, which enlivens the themes at work. Bravo!
Dr Kane Holborn
A kaleidoscope of vibrant red, bright blue, xanthine yellow
cuts a scanned slice of neurological matter
or
Louis Wain’s cat?
Disappointment, fear and fury
picks up the razor
severs his ear
paints a self-portrait.
Strabismus dwarf squats
midst the Bruegel-type landscape
as the patricide axeman
advances through the melee.
Genius or madman?
Creative talent oozes while
Incarcerated in the asylum of the brain.
Antosh’s Highly Commended: Please Do Not Propose by Francesco Sarti
Antosh’s Highly Commended: Please Do Not Propose by Francesco Sarti
I was really taken with this work of flash fiction, which drops the reader so carefully into a considered, almost spiralling moment for the narrator. The works that influence the text are neatly embodied, even though they are disparate, the structure of the piece holds and draws such interesting colours and imagery from the art pieces. A quiet, vulnerable storm of a piece. Well done.
Antosh Wojcik
Inspired by: Casa Batlló by Antony Gaudi (Building), The Hateful Eight by Quentin Tarantino (Film), The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson (Picture Book)
We enter the liquid corridors with squeaky shoes, rain bouncing on the scaly flooring, and this UNESCO World Heritage Site, this marvel of wavy walls and whirlpool ceilings is my refuge from a snowstorm, deep in the mountains, carrying a convicted murderer waiting to be hanged. We go up, almost floating, submerged by the tropical windows like schools of poisonous fish. Jody is in a rush to get to the dragon-like roof; but I delay him. I linger for unbearable stretches over the seahorse-shaped doorhandles and the azure crystals of the elevator’s buttons. That roof seems designed to spill blood. Blood can channel through the dragon’s ribs and tail, flushing inside a building with no straight lines, no corners, flowing freely over every feature better than a Roman aqueduct. Once on the roof, how will I know if someone’s hiding under my feet? Someone ready to snatch a shot from below—a deadly angle—right when I’m most vulnerable? As we ascend, like bubbles in wine, I remind Jody of his former girlfriends. The allergy-prone fox. The tired owl. The starving snake. He says our love would scare them off. But now I look at him: a grey, small, innocent mouse who survived a snake, an owl, a fox, and I wonder what he sees in me. I wonder if he’s got a pathological fascination with terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in terrible jaws. I stare at this tiny rodent getting on one knee, right on the back of a dragon, on top of a house made of oceans, and I am terrified.
