Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Ekphrasis as enactment: towards a poetics of contemporary diaspora practice

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    This essay emerges as practice-based research generated by my own writing of ekphrastic poetry. It aims to articulate a poetics of diaspora engendered by this practice and its triggers, contexts, dynamics and strategies. In an investigation of questions about ekphrasis raised by literary criticism, the essay considers a network of traditional historical, literary and theoretical approaches, and debates about its validity. It also revisits the sources of ancient ekphrasis in oral delivery and the medieval meditative practices of ekphrasis. Medieval oral and rhetorical reading and delivery focuses on the effect of ekphrasis upon the mind and feelings of the reader or listener, a feature feasibly linked to contemporary ekphrasis as practice, voice and performance. This essay illustrates the emphasis on the workings of creative mind through an example and commentary on the composition of one of my own poems, where the contexts of its writing – of migration, memory, ambivalence and temporal displacement – have significance for the development of a poetics of diaspora practice.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1-13
    Number of pages13
    JournalAxon: creative explorations
    Volume7
    Issue number2
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2017

    Keywords

    • ekphrasis
    • enargeia
    • creative writing
    • mind
    • medieval rhetoric
    • diaspora

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Ekphrasis as enactment: towards a poetics of contemporary diaspora practice'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this