Every Picture Tells a Poem
Ekphrastic Poetry (ek-frasʹ-tik; Greek, “speaking out”): Poetry that imitates, describes, critiques, dramatizes, reflects upon, or otherwise responds to a work of nonliterary art, especially the visual.
Throughout the centuries, poets have created many wonderful ekphrastic works, such as John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, William Carlos Williams’ Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, Elizabeth Bishop’s Large Bad Picture, and Anne Sexton’s The Starry Night. Ekphrastic poetry does more than provide mere description of the artwork--it brings complementary, elevated, or a completely new meaning and enlightment to each piece.
Some of the poems were matched with existing photographs. Some of the photographs were inspired by and taken to complement specific poems, and some of the poems were inspired by existing photographs
All the poems are by John Pollock, and Lisa J. Sullivan.