Student Work Selected for Mass Poetry Ekphrastic Art Contest

Writing Center Director Colleen Michaels and Assistant Professor Dawn Paul have been working with Mass Poetry this year to design an ekphrastic poetry challenge for the upcoming Massachusetts Poetry Festival.

Ekphrastic poetry refers to variety of poetry inspired by or written in response to another work of art, usually visual art. The visual art for this particular ekphrastic challenge is—what else?—the work of Montserrat students!

The students’ pieces will be displayed in an “ekphrastic art gallery,” paired beside the winning submissions to the Ekphrastic Art Contest:

“One poem will be chosen to accompany each piece and will be displayed as part of the online gallery premiering Festival weekend. In addition, Mass Poetry may turn some winning entries and the associated artwork into broadsides.  The deadline is March 31, 2021.  Poems will be chosen by a guest judge, to be announced.”

Twelve pieces of art have been chosen to inspire the poetry submissions:

Audrey Aristeo, Relief Study 4

Alexcis Ausanio-Moses, Identity

Thomas Calamari, The Birch on The Shore

Gabi Casella, Moth

Sydney Gauthier, Hierarchy

Maeve Lally, A Spry, Young Mother

Rebecca Nagle, Renascence

Erein James Ruiz, Being Perfect Is A Very Unrealistic Expectation

Thomas Rutigliano, Beyond the Heart: Take Care of Yourself

Justine Sczepczenski, Feeding Time

Rebekah Sommer, The Bend

Holden Willard, Two Boys in a Canoe

To see photos of the selected students’ spectacular work—and to submit an ekphrastic piece responding to them! Head over to masspoetry.org/festival-calls