Ekphrastic Translations

In this hands-on, interactive workshop, participants will experiment with poetry as a vital and generative mode of thinking and writing through art. In the gallery, participants will be invited to engage in a series of slow looking exercises to heighten and attune attention to the individual works in They Lift the Sky, then create small matière using printed matter and collage materials in response. These layers of textural, visual, and textual responses will be used to compose a piece of ekphrastic writing.

Sheryda Warrener is a poet and teacher. Her most recent collection, Test Piece (Coach House Books, 2022), was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She is a lecturer in poetry in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In her course Pure Seeing: Thinking & Writing Through Art, artists and writers explore how art and writing disciplines can influence each other to evolve new forms and modes of making. She is the creator of The Provocation Collection: theprovocationcollection.com, a series of material prompts for writers designed in collaboration with artists.