Writing Exercise: Ekphrasis

Sometimes the hardest part of writing is starting. There's so much pressure to come up with a good idea that you forget there are good ideas around you all the time.

In the coming months we’ll be sharing some of the exercises we use in our Writing Rooms to introduce new ways of finding inspiration, and to relieve a bit of the pressure. (Check out our last exercise here!)

This month's exercise is about ekphrasis. Traditionally, ekphrastic poetry is poetry inspired by and written about other works of art. Notable examples include John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn, or, more recently, Anne Sexton's The Starry Night:

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky.
The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die.

It moves. They are all alive.
Even the moon bulges in its orange irons
to push children, like a god, from its eye.
The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars.
Oh starry starry night! This is how
I want to die:

into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry.

Sexton's inspiration may have come from Van Gogh's Starry Night, but her poem is entirely hers. What art inspires you? Sculpture? Architecture? Photographs? Don't feel limited to what's hanging in the museum. Sometimes a random image is all you need.

Interested in getting started? Check out our calendar of upcoming workshops (both in-person and online) and give yourself the chance to see what you'll write next.