Paul Munden, "Unclassified: Nigel Kennedy in Chapters & Verse"

Paul Munden is an award-winning poet, editor and screenwriter living in North Yorkshire. He has published six poetry collections, including Asterisk (2011), based around Shandy Hall, where Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy. He was director of the UK’s National Association of Writers in Education, 1994-2018, and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Leeds, 2019-2023. He is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia.

About Unclassified: Nigel Kennedy in Chapters & Verse, by Paul Munden
Nigel Kennedy is one of the world’s foremost violinists. His achievements have been met with great acclaim, not least his ability, both as performer and composer, to move across and blend an extraordinary range of musical genres and styles, resisting any notion of classification. Yet he remains a controversial figure, having rocked the classical music establishment with his radical innovations and uncompromising views. 

Paul Munden has followed Nigel Kennedy’s musical journey for many years, and in Unclassified sets down his reflections on everything he has gained from that experience. From a poet’s perspective, he writes about Kennedy’s recordings and performances, indeed the poetry of his playing. A sequence of chapters exploring various themes is interspersed with original poems, the idea deriving from Kennedy’s own improvised transitoires between movements of a concerto.

The first ever study of Nigel Kennedy’s exceptional talent, Unclassified delves into complex questions: about the relationship between so-called genius and unconventional behaviour; the true purpose of education; the freedom of the interpreter; connections between music and poetry, music and sport; and the role of the artist as advocate of political and humanitarian causes. It speaks to fans and detractors alike; to musicians, both professional and amateur; also to the general, curious reader not only about music but a wealth of associated cultural issues. 

You can read more about Unclassified on the publisher's website here. Below you can read an excerpt from the first chapter of the book, followed by an introduction to one of the poems.

From Unclassified, by Paul Munden

Above all, I wanted to explore why it matters that everyone should, as the eighteenth-century writer Laurence Sterne puts it, 'tell their stories their own way': tell stories, or write poems, play music, and indeed live life with truly individual purpose. Sterne’s great book, the utterly unclassifiable Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, revels in eccentricity. And as my book became increasingly eccentric, I thought 'yes, that’s as it should be.' How else to do justice to a maverick musician, described by his one-time girlfriend Brix Smith as 'a cross between Mozart and Keith Moon'?

Sterne, godfather of eccentric art, became a presiding influence in my creative explorations. His notorious digressions became instrumental to my musings on where the mind roams when we listen to music. I decided to borrow his non-textual interventions: the black page, marbled page, blank page and the 'flourish of liberty' – his various incitements for the reader to bring their own imagination to the artistic adventure. 

*

An example of how these elements come together is at the end of Chapter 5. An anecdote about Kennedy’s free-wheel driving across the Malvern hills is followed by 'an artist’s sketch, made a few centuries earlier, by Laurence Sterne, describing – with an inter-textual flourish of the pen – how his character flourishes his stick in the air, saying "Whilst a man is free—."' 

Free Verse

it starts with a mischievous smile
a sideways 
glance at the passenger
who doesn’t at first realize
the car’s out of gear
and that the driver’s taken his feet
off the pedals
though something feels
different
strangely at ease
gradually picking up effortless speed 
down the empty road
but just as she’s beginning to enjoy it
he takes his hands off the wheel
thrusting them in the air
before rummaging 
in the dashboard clutter for an Ornette 
Coleman cassette 
and ramming it into the deck
so that now as it plays
she can’t hear herself think
above her own scream blending
with the saxophone’s wail
and the claret and blue jaguar
with its already indecipherable scrawl
is becoming a blur
that she sees from afar
careening down the hill
with herself inside
cowering from the broken white 
lines like silent gunfire
streaming into the bonnet

The Sound of Music: Ekphrastic Review Contest

By Lorette C. Luzajic, editor, The Ekphrastic Review

The Ekphrastic Review is pleased to announce a new flash fiction and poetry contest called The Sound of Music. Explore our curated collection of music-themed artworks, and use them to inspire your stories and poems. 

The judge is Jonathan Taylor, from the University of Leicester. 

The deadline is March 25, 2023.

Selected works will be published in The Ekphrastic Review. First place wins $100 CAD.

Entry is $10 CAD for five poems and/or stories. You can read the rules in full for the competition here. 

You can read more about The Ekphrastic Review on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Lorette C. Luzajic, "Winter in June"

Lorette C. Luzajic writes from Toronto, Canada. Her flash fiction and prose poetry have been widely published, including in Cleaver, The Citron Review, JMWW, The Miramichi Reader, Unbroken, Ghost Parachute, Cabinet of Heed, and numerous anthologies. She won first place in a flash contest at MacQueen’s Quinterly and was longlisted at Furious Fiction Australia. She has been nominated three times each for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Lorette is the creator and editor of The Ekphrastic Review, a journal devoted entirely to literature inspired by visual art. She is also an internationally collected collage and mixed media artist. Her website is here. 

About Winter in June, by Lorette C. Luzajic

Winter in June is a collection of flash fiction and prose poetry, small stories haunted by art history and memories real and imagined. Each piece is inspired by an artist or a work of visual art, but stands alone. You will meet a monk, a stripper, a man obsessed by taxidermy, and take a ride on a train with a man who isn’t there. You will smoke salvia divinorum, the most psychotropic plant known to humankind. You will sample salami in Italy, and join a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Death in Mexico City. You will see the phantom of Flatwoods for yourself, reluctantly attend a bullfight, fall in love with a convict, search for Andy Warhol’s grave, and ask a machine to grant your deepest longings. You will swim with a barracuda and watch a man eat his own grandmother. You will also visit a safe space, an art gallery where there is nothing to see but clean white walls. Even with all this terror and enchantment, it is really just a scrapbook of snapshots of everyday moments and ordinary magic.  

Winter in June is available here. You can see more details here. Below, you can read a sample piece from the collection. 

From Winter in June

Night Flight

Imagine, we were half bird. Our flight is fleeting, yes, but still we sometimes slipped into the sky. You are new to this world and don’t know the half of it. Even so, you show us the way. How to slay the dragons, how to turn the page. We gnaw on plastic poultry legs and rubbery bananas and you fake punch a random price into a toy cash register, hold your grubby paw out for my pocketful of coins. I wouldn’t have wished the world on you, but here you are. You have arrived, starry eyed and surprised. You have a blue-green bike and a matching bow in your hair. You love cucumbers and mangos and the frilliest pajamas. Every word is a victory and you’re starting to string them together. We were dancing in our sock feet in your toy room, stripes and polka dots a blur in your swirl. If only we had more ice cream, you say when I pull out the goodnight story. You stall for time before lights out and I guess it’s the same for all of us. Lord, just one more year, just one more day, just one more hour. But soon you are drifting through the clouds and I watch sleep soften your small face. The moon is your witness, I think, kissing you where she does on your dimple. I cover you in a thin sheet, watch your shifting shoulders, small wings dark as earth.  

“Night Flight” first appeared in Gyroscope Review.

Ruth Stacey, "The Dark Room: Letters to Krista"

 

Ruth Stacey is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Worcester, England. Her first poetry collection Queen, Jewel, Mistress was published by Eyewear Publishing, 2015, and her second full collection, I, Ursula, was published in January 2020 by V. Press Poetry. Her pamphlets include Inheritance, published by Mothers Milk Books in 2017. A duet with another poet, Katy Wareham Morris, the collection explores 19th century experience of motherhood, contrasted with a 21st century mother's voice. Inheritance won Best Collaborative Work at the 2018 Saboteur Awards. Three books have been published with the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. A poetic memoir, How to Wear Grunge, was published in 2018. An experimental pamphlet, Viola the Virgin Queen, illustrated by Desdemona McCannon, was published in 2020, and Ruth's latest work, The Dark Room: Letters to Krista, a collaboration with Krista Kay, was published in 2021. Stacey is currently writing an imagined memoir in poetry of the tarot artist Pamela Colman Smith, as part of her PhD study. 

Ruth's website is here. You can read more about her collection I, Ursula on Creative Writing at Leicester here.

About The Dark Room: Letters to Krista

By Ruth Stacey

I contacted Krista (a Portland, USA, based photographer, who photographed some of the people from the 90s Seattle scene) about using a photograph of her friend Demri Parrott for the cover of my poetry memoir, How to Wear Grunge, but due to a message being missed that didn't happen and I commissioned a painted portrait of Demri instead. Following the publication of the HTWG book, Krista saw the message and contacted me in early summer of 2020, during the pandemic. What followed was a correspondence that revealed many common interests and enabled conversations around the themes of loss, nostalgia for youth, memory, vibrant life and tragic death, preserving memories, whilst sharing our photography and poetry. Those conversations become prose poem letters in The Dark Room, which Krista answered with her enigmatic and compelling photographs. I really enjoy working collaboratively with a visual artist. Creating a sequence with text and image to tell a narrative allows different pathways through the stories that are told. Being able to meet another artist and create a new artefact, and a friendship, was an uplifting experience during a difficult year of lockdown, and these poems reflect the light that is found through art and friendship.

By Krista Kay

This book, The Dark Room, is a collaboration between Ruth Stacey, a sensitive, lovely, deeply talented writer, and myself. We have built a friendship and exchanged letters over the past year or so and many topics we have discussed revolve around memory, nostalgia, regret, love, loss. Ruth has written about Demri before (How to Wear Grunge) and I was struck by her profound ability to think deeply and encapsulate with words the importance of understanding complicated lives. Demri has often come up in our conversations. Demri inspired everyone she touched and made the people around her feel beautiful. I have wanted to share her in a way that honored her bright energy and this book is one way to begin to do that. Ruth and I honor others in our lives that we have lost and together we seek to make sense of their absence and our lives forever changed. https://www.instagram.com/kristakayphoto/

Below, you can read an excerpt from The Dark Room.

From The Dark Room: Letters to Krista

The Ekphrastic Review and Lorette C. Luzajic

Lorette C. Luzajic is a writer and mixed media artist from Toronto, Canada. She studied for a Bachelor of Arts in journalism at Ryerson University, but always gravitated towards more creative pursuits, especially painting, art history and poetry. She has four independently published books of poetry: The Astronaut's Wife, Solace, The Lords of George Street, and Aspartame, and her poems have appeared widely in online and print publications like Rattle, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Geez, Peacock Journal, Taxicab, KYSO Flash, Cultural Weekly, Art Ascent, and more. Her award-winning visual art has been collected and exhibited worldwide, including Mexico and Tunisia, and has appeared in galleries, museums, banks, hotels, laundromats, nightclubs, billboards, a luxury jewellery company ad campaign, and numerous literary journals and poetry book covers. In 2015, Lorette founded The Ekphrastic Review, an online journal devoted entirely to literature inspired by art.

Lorette C. Luzajic, Wonder Woman for President

About The Ekphrastic Review
By Lorette C. Luzajic

The Ekphrastic Review is a rare literary journal dedicated wholly to ekphrastic writing. "Ekphrastic" is a Greek word that simply means "to explain." Along the way, it came to mean writing that specifically described a work of art. In contemporary times, it usually means "writing inspired by art." 

It's a very old form of writing that Homer, Plato, and Socrates used or talked about. Ekphrastic poetry was essential to the Romantics and the most famous example is probably John Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn." William Carlos Williams, Rainer Maria Rilke, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Charles Simic are just a few famous poets known for their ekphrastic writing.

When I started the journal, it was really meant to be a hobby blog where I collected and shared interesting paintings and poems for my own enjoyment. My own artwork is often inspired by poetry or literature, and my most satisfying writing is about art, so ekphrasis was the natural intersection for me between my major life passions. I really didn't anticipate becoming an important archive of ekphrastic literature or having a devoted readership. The blog started as "Ekphrastic: writing on art, and art on writing." I posted paintings I liked that featured text or people reading, and occasionally shared a poem about art. But we began to attract an audience of serious writers rather quickly, and so I changed the name accordingly to denote the importance of the genre to its fans. We become The Ekphrastic Review.

I believe very strongly that contemplation and writing is the most important way we can approach art and art history. Whether we study only the surface of an artwork, or delve into its backstory and the artist's biography, our experience of art is enriched. It's an intimate process of learning to look at art, to find new ways in. The process of ekphrastic writing deepens a writer's own practice, too - we learn new ways of thinking, reflecting, and asking questions. Our imagination is fired in unexpected directions. Memories surface, connections form. We are led by curiosity into different worlds, different stories.

We have been blessed to feature over 800 writers from all over the world. (We keep an alphabetical list of writers for easy reference- interested readers can see it here). 

Until now, we have focused on ekphrastic writing, but as we continue to evolve we want to feature essays or articles that are about the craft of ekphrastic writing, ekphrastic book reviews, interviews with writers about ekphrases, and also translations of ekphrastic poetry from other languages. Submissions of these categories is especially encouraged moving forward. We also accept poetry, prose and fiction submissions that meet our ekphrastic guidelines. See: http://www.ekphrastic.net/submit.html

We are especially pleased to have recently formed a prize nomination committee, so that we will able to nominate our amazing writers for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards from now on. We are also going to have our own annual best Ekphrastic nominations.

Finally, we have biweekly prompts - look for our challenges every other Friday. The art varies widely in order to inspire a range of work.

Here is a poem from our archives, inspired by Gas, a painting by Edward Hopper (USA, 1940):

Gas, 1940

Pegasus, a faded red, about to fly off
into the sky, which stretches above the dark 
pines, the rural road running by, a river,
all curves and meanders. The white paint’s
flaked off the wooden shingles,
and the Drink Coca-Cola! sign is stained
with rust, but the light in the window
casts a yellow glow on the cement.

I think my parents are about to cruise up
in their Buick, a big gray boat of a car,
the one that was up on blocks during the war,
and they have no idea what darkness lies
up ahead. She’s happy, leaning back 
on the plush seat, the night air riffling 
her page boy; he leans his arm out the window,
the ash of his cigarette eddying to the ground.

The lone attendant fills their tank, checks the oil,
wipes both windshields until they gleam, then returns
to his metal chair, his solitary vigil, keeper 
of the lighthouse, pilot of the night.

Barbara Crooker

This poem was previously published in Barbara Crooker's book, More (C&R Press, 2010). 

"Desert Scene": An Exercise in Ekphrasis, By Colin Gardiner

By Colin Gardiner

The following poem was written in an ekphrastic experiment during my studies at the University of Leicester. I was drawn to a painting by Jane Domingos called Saguaro Blossom Night (2011) on display at the Leicester New Walk Art Gallery.

Immediately, I was struck with the stillness of the desert scene, and the suggestion of movement in the centre of the picture. As I observed the painting, I allowed my mind to drift. I began to imagine a cinematic moment. This day-dream state left me open to ideas and feelings. Associated thoughts about music and films entered my mind, which enabled me to start sketching out ideas for a poem. Further research revealed the artist’s intent to portray the "otherness of life left behind" and this further inspired my poem.

I feel that this was truly a collaborative effort, between the artist and myself. I found that my poetic response to the painting added an extra element to the two-dimensional image. I tried not to edit myself too much in my note-taking. Through this approach, I found power in the more "naïve" aspects of the rough drafts that followed. Overall, I found ekphrasis to be a creatively stimulating process.  

 
Desert Scene

I think they're cooking up magic, 
In the blue/black hour before dawn. 
Lights on in the bullet-shaped trailer
As a car approaches, hissing over gravel,
Tail-lights squeezing tumbleweeds
Into orange crush.

A broken spine of hills, prone behind 
Restless rolls of dessert. Helplessly 
Stalked by pin-pricked stars,
That tattoo the night’s sleeping skin.
Silver whispers of steel guitar tweak 
Aerials, slowly evaporating. 

I’m parked up by Mr Cactus, 
Stoned silent in his cotton crown, 
His incessant needles bristle at my company.
The delivery just came in.
Three shots. Puncture night-watch stasis 
Echoing across heartbroken dunes.

An aerial prolapse of popcorn stars 
Slither on butter trails and gather 
In my lap. Too hot to move and
Shake out this hidden greasy take-out 
Nest. Too hot to take a rest in 
This rattlesnake windscreen interior. 



Reference
Domingos, J. (2011). Saguaro Blossom Night. [Oil on canvas] Leicester: Leicester New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. 


About the author
Colin Gardiner is currently studying an MA in creative writing at the University of Leicester. He is originally from Birmingham and now lives in Coventry.

Poem by Michelle McGrane

Michelle McGrane's collection The Suitable Girl is published by Pindrop Press in the United Kingdom and Modjaji Books in South Africa. She lives in Johannesburg.

Michelle writes of the following poem: "The poem was included in a beautiful anthology of poetry and art, edited by Agnes Marton, called Drifting Down the Lane. For a while I've been intrigued and enchanted by the magical work of French scientist, botanist and artist, Patrick Blanc, and his creation of green walls and vertical gardens, the new life he's created for buildings' exteriors and the positive effects these living walls have had on people's lives. I wanted to write something that I felt would be relevant to our lives in cities today all over the world: environmental devastation; the decline of wildlife in urban areas, and spiritual decline, too - the effect that being surrounded by soulless, lifeless places and a lack of greenery has on our psyches."

                   

The Architecture of Leaves

It's a breathing tapestry, a solar shield,

a canvas of ferns, vines and epiphytes

rising six flights in a city besieged

by billboards and exhaust residues.

It's a hydroponic lung, a capillary song,

a glissando of blooms, shrubs and grasses

colonising nooks and crevices, meshed

roots threading through propagation felt.

It's a verdant beacon, an urgent semaphore,

a nitrogen enriched, drip irrigated 3-D mural.

It's sedge, old man's beard, mile-a-minute,

coral bells, mandevilla and climbing fig.

It's riotous bougainvillea, feathery acacia,

mauve wisteria, plumed buddleias and shy violas.

It's long-awned stipa, creeping jenny,

saxifrage rosettes and dusky pink sedums.

It's a wind-borne destination, a butterfly haven,

a rendezvous for starlings and sparrows

amid ovate, palmate, dark glossy trifoliate,

white-veined, heart-shaped, variegated leaves.

It's arachnid hieroglyphics, a ghost in the machine,

the ciphers concealed in spores and seeds.

It's a pulse among blue-chip glass and steel,

above footsteps, fag-ends and fast food debris.

It's a chlorophyll dream, a green hallelujah,

a living tourniquet, a shrine to Gaia,

an antidote to banks and strip-lit malls,

heat islands, car parks and concrete flyovers.