Brewster Ladies' Library presents Talking Back to the Walls: A Generative Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop with Rose Auslander

Works of art don’t hang on walls for nothing. Every one needs to be seen—and heard. You don’t have to be an art expert (or a poet) to respond to a painting, sculpture, or any work of art. Whether you’ve never written or painted before, or have published and exhibited widely, let’s gather to spend time with a few artworks and find ways to write ourselves into their stories. Taking inspiration from works displayed at the Brewster Ladies’ Library, we’ll:

• Re-envision what we see in the artwork, from our own thoughts and days and surroundings, or from what we miss
• Jumpstart with prompts to transform what we see and how we respond on the page
• Share some of what we’ve written, for mutual support

You’ll leave this workshop ready to welcome this summer with a poem in your pocket and new ways to write.

Rose Auslander lives on Cape Cod year-round and is addicted to poetry and water, not necessarily in that order. Her book Wild Water Child won the 2016 Bass River Press Poetry Contest; her chapbooks include Folding Water, Hints, and The Dolphin in the Gowanus; and look for her poems in the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, Chicago Review, LEON, New Ohio Review, New American Writing, RHINO, Rumble Fish, Roanoke Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Tinderbox. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson, and one of her ekphrastic poems was featured in The Piltdown Review: https://www.piltdownreview.com/2019/04/ship-of-fools-surviving-fragment-of-triptych.html