Welcome to ‘Poems Meet Paintings’. Since you have found your way to this site, you must be as curious about the interaction between words and images as I am. Over the years, I have had the unique opportunity to study the ‘cross-fertilization’ between the arts, particularly those that takes place between literature and the visual arts. During this time I have had the privilege of working closely with an extra-ordinary group of international scholars. who have made many strides toward understanding how word-image relationships work. But as exhilarating and rewarding as our current and past research has been, this project is different. My ‘blog’ is not directed at scholars in the field (although all are welcome!). It is written for the wonderful people who inspired it in the first place: those who are not specialists in the field but who have a lively curiosity about the arts and want to learn more about interdisciplinarity. I hope that, in sharing what I have learned about this fascinating field over the years, these short discussions on literature and the visual arts will be a rewarding experience for all.
“Modus Operandi”
- We will be looking primarily at various types of relationships that can be found between poetry and paintings/sculptures/photographs/architecture (a tricky one). The term for poems that address artworks in some way is ‘ekphrasis’, a ‘rhetorical term referring to the representation of existing or imagined works of art in poetry, prose, and drama’. The term ‘paintings’ will be used not only to refer to paintings, but as a more general term referring to sculpture, photographs, and other genres that fall under the term ‘visual arts’.
- In all of my entries, I will use plenty of texts and images. Where I am treading on the copyrights of others, I will mostly take the safe road and supply helpful links to the artworks. For each entry, I will add a short list of further reading for those interested in further exploring specific topics. There will also be a few entries on teaching ideas for Word and Image and projects that might be interesting to try at home with the kids, or with your art club/book club (etc).
- And now to YOU, the person on the other side of this conversation. I will try to post one entry every week. You can find these in “Postings”. Each new posting has a chapter heading, each developing the ideas that have been discussed in previous chapters (so it’s best to ‘begin at the beginning’, if you are new to ekphrasis.) Your questions and comments are important! These can be sent to me through the ‘comment’ function and I will faithfully try to answer them all!
So let’s get started!
Valerie Robillard