A Virtual Winter Writing Festival: Ekphrastic Texture Poem, presented by Dr. Susan Moeller from the Ohio Poetry Association. A partnership with Main Street Ravenna.
In this poetry workshop for adults, we will peruse a virtual exhibition of works based on the quilting tradition where different materials are used similar to poetic devices.
Foiling, embroidery, printing, applique, cheese and mud cloth, perle cotton, silk ribbon and beading are just a few that allow the fabric collage to create its anatomy, bone structure, and muscles, so to speak. Color combinations, finish and unfinished seams/edges, masking and transparency speak to the layers a writer creates in poetry. Dyed fabric adds to the creation as much as the poet adds color to expression. Styles and techniques used to manipulate the artwork such as shibori, free motion stitching, and pebble quilting compare to the genres of poetry.
As a poem goes through its textural metamorphosis, so do cut-up fabric blocks when they are repurposed into a two or three-dimensional work. Piecing here works in tandem with the writer's way to compose a text, even from left-over lines or notes collected here and there as they are assembled into a cohesive poem just like compositional strip piecing that creates dimension and visual movement. Initially messy, both art forms create order out of chaos. While one takes shapes, the other takes words to morph them.
Word Assemblies mirror Quilted Assemblies and pay tribute to their expanded dimensions as workshop participants expand their own into the realm of poetic exploration. Layering, cutting, and stitching words that express textile textures, i. e. their feel, in a composition of colors and shapes, i.e. their optic appeal, determine the focus of this poetry workshop that is centered on expressing our sense of touch and vision as inspired by the works in this exhibition. To this end, we will employ the deliberate use of a select poetic devices, namely those, that find their similar equivalent in the works of this exhibition as we create an ekphrastic poem.
Virtual meeting
