Poem a Day 14: Ekphrasis with Emmie Van Biervliet

Welcome to Day 14! To celebrate the halfway point, today's prompt is an idea of what to write about with some absolutely gorgeous artwork. This is the second of your four ekphrasis prompts (writing about art), each one featuring a different local artist depicting Oxford in a different medium. And your Oxford beauty for today is Amber Light on Broad Street, by Emmie van Biervliet:

 

Click on the image for a full-size version (reproduced with permission)

All Emmie's work is dazzlingly rich, with some hefty influence from magical realism, and a dizzying array of multimedia materials going into each piece. In making this one, she explained, "The original piece was done in acrylics but also included all sorts of things including an electrical circuit board, German fairy tale cutout, gold leaf and coffee. It portrays a mixing pot of tourists, students and towns people on Broad street at last light, the golden hour before darkness descends. While sketching and preparing for making it, I was interested in the details of the rooftops that are easy to miss when walking by and the statues and Anthony Gormley statue like static characters that watch down on the passersby."

All Emmie's work is similarly rich with those energetic bouncy lines and jewelled colours. She also has an "Amber Dusk on Broad Street" plus more pieces depicting farther-flung places. You can see the whole gallery of her work here. And if you're hankering to bring Broad Street home, the original piece has sold but she does have it as a limited edition Giclee, at £160 for a 30cm by 60cm print. (Giclee is super high-quality artist's printing, as I know from my artist mother!) If you're interested, you can contact her via her site or by email at info@emmievb.com.

Ekphrasis, remember, just means "writing about art": you can be responding to the piece or simply describing what you see. You could write this one free verse or use it to explore any poem form you've had your eye on which you haven't tried yet – ekphrasis is always a useful way to explore a new form. If you'd like an idea for a type of poem, I have two serving suggestions which I think might suit her style very well.

Firstly, you could write a chant: a simple, repetitive poem with a very strong rhythm and either the whole thing gets repeated or certain lines get repeated. The boldness and magical eerieness of chants seem a super match for Emmie's style. If you watched the BBC's Worzel Gummidge adaptation, think of the scarecrows gathering together, repeating the words which turn into a song, "It's the tree with the key, the sycamore tree..." You can choose any rhythm you like for a chant, and put your rhymes anywhere, but the rhythm should be bold and the rhymes plentiful! The Worzel Gummidge chant uses di-di-DUM-di-di-DUM as a rhythm. Here's a chant I wrote about the new Dark Crystal series, with every line DUM-di-DUM, and the last one DUM-DUM:

The Dark Crystal

Bones and juice
Wings and grit
Dirt and roots
Squelch and spit
Curve and joint
Shell and skin
Bark and mud
Glow and spin
Stink and life
Glee, disgust
Grow and rut
No rust.

Alternately, if you feel like stretching your limbs more, a quatern also seems a good fit for Emmie's style, the shifting repetition of the first line becoming a kind of collage / mixed-media of its own, as that line gets reused and remade in each stanza.

Line #	Repeat
1	Line 1
2	xxxxx
3	xxxxx
4	xxxxx
5	xxxxx
6	Line 1
7	xxxxx
8	xxxxx
9	xxxxx
10	xxxxx
11	Line 1
12	xxxxx
13	xxxxx
14	xxxxx
15	xxxxx
16	Line 1

A quatern has four stanzas each of four lines. Line 1 is the first line in the first stanza, the second line in the second stanza, the third line in the third stanza, and the fourth line in the fourth stanza. The lines are usually abou the same length and you can use any metre (rhythm) or rhyme scheme you like. Here's an example with the repeated line in bold:

Your hand wrapping round mine, love
in the firm clasp as cobbles and balconies steepen,
as my legs weaken, and you lead me lightly
into the shade – always finding me shade.

Like a sea breeze, a tingle travels my skin at
your hand wrapping round mine. Love
tumbles like vines sprouting flowers from stone
down the precipice, in verdant vertigo.

Alleys narrow, flower pots rise, old doors open
as the strangely silent siesta unpeels to find
your hand wrapping round mine. Love
lays out its glittering wares, as lamps light.

Shutters rise, evening exhales and starts to laugh.
Seafood wafts, glasses fill, fingers tease my palm
and the templar knights’ castle rises, calm and eternal as
your hand wrapping round mine, love.

---

The Meddling with Poetry course explores a host of different poetry forms as well as the musicality of language, poetic imagery, and other aspects of the poetic. It's 8 weeks long, one evening a week, and absolute beginners and experienced writers are equally welcome. You can read more details and book a place here.