Ekphrasis, poetry and emplacement: 'writing with' visual art

The practice of ekphrasis has traditionally focused on the verbal representation, focusing on description, of real or imagined art works in poetry. But of course verbal description is never separate from its form, language and the creative, and technical dynamics of poetic composition. From a practice-based perspective, the process of writing poetry in response to visual art, and visual response itself, includes cognitive, affective and associative elements within the creative-writing process. These responses have an immediacy and depth that begs for investigation. The research of this paper is integral to my creative-writing practice, but rather than being descriptive of it, the practice has been the stimulus for a research exploration into implications of the visual response for creativity, memory and the language and form of poetry, especially as the significations of artworks convey the aesthetic and affective marks of their creators. This paper aims to unpack and expand upon the possibilities of visual response and its related visual imaginings, for poetic composition. This process is generated within local and emplaced contexts, promoting new, affective and creative formations in language and form. It does this within the context of a poetic practice driven by the immediacy of lived and embodied displacements. The process also suggests that the context of this compositional practice (writing initially in the presence of the material artwork) itself instigates tensions of fragmentedness, alterity and deferral within and against motivations of identity, and even story, in poetry. Conscious of the potential for appropriation of others’ artworks in this process, I argue that it is the dialogue with the creative work of others that energises and facilitates my work. This dialogue is a necessary part of engagement with alterity in the exploration towards recognising an individual and wide-ranging, poetics.