Alchemy of the Page: A 3-Part Mutli-Arts Poetry Journey (Ages 18+)
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Taught by Emily Robyn Clark, an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and singer-songwriter, this three-part creative writing series invites you to explore poetry through visual art, persona, nature, close observation, imagination, and transformation. Across three sessions, you will move between looking, writing, seeing, sensing, and inhabiting different voices, discovering how poetry can emerge from paintings, photographs, natural forms, masks, memory, and the physical world.
Each session introduces a different approach to poetry and artmaking: ekphrastic poetry, persona
poetry, and nature-based transformational writing. You will leave with a small body of original
poems and a deeper appreciation for the relationship between poetry, visual art, imagination,
nature, and lived experience.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Session 1: Enter the Canvas: An Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop
Ekphrasis is a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art. This creative writing
workshop invites you to look deeply at visual art and encounter it with your five senses on the
page. Because both poetry and visual art speak to our imaginations through the power of images,
you will learn to use words and language as the poet’s paintbrush and encounter the art in a fresh
way.
I will be introducing ekphrastic poems from well-known poets and inviting everyone to reflect
on the way poetry can expand the depth of our love and engagement with visual art.
You will choose an artwork that causes an immediate reaction and explore what you see, feel, or
question. You will be encouraged to go beyond merely describing what is in the artwork by
making it personal, giving it a voice, capturing its energy and action with words, and adding your
own life and dimension to it.
You will leave with original ekphrastic poems filled with vivid images, colors, and metaphors
and a deeper appreciation for the relationship between visual art and poetry.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Session 2: Through the Mask: A Persona Poetry Workshop
The word persona derives from the Latin persona, meaning the mask worn by an actor. From the
ritual masks of the ancient Greek stage to the constructed identities of literature, theatre,
mythology, and popular culture, the mask has long offered artists a means of transformation. In
persona poetry, the writer assumes another voice, entering the consciousness of a figure,
character, or imagined presence.
This imaginative writing workshop invites you to step beyond the boundaries of autobiography
and inhabit a perspective other than your own.
Through close readings of persona poems and guided writing exercises, we will enter a
transformed place where we can freely explore truth outside of the confines of our own
individual identities.
Writing through persona offers both freedom and creative distance. Behind the mask, you can
experiment with unfamiliar styles, identities, emotional registers, and ways of seeing the world.
The workshop will also consider the relationship between speaker and poet: what becomes
possible when we write as another, and what aspects of ourselves may be revealed through the
act of disguise?
You will leave with original persona poems and a deeper understanding of poetic voice,
character, imagination, dramatic perspective, and the transformative possibilities of the mask.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Session 3: Transformational Art: An Art and Poetry Workshop
This interdisciplinary workshop invites you to explore the unique tactile composition of natural
forms such as a seashell, a feather, or a coconut. Through close observation, you will create
sketches and write poems that speak to each natural form, its place, and its function in the world
around us.
By moving between visual art and creative writing, you will engage with different parts of the
mind, body, imagination, and creative process while discovering new ways to see and interpret
the world around you.
You will study natural forms through visual observation, sketching, sensory detail, memory,
metaphor, and association. You will consider how elements of the natural world can become
vessels for story, image, feeling, and transformation.
You will leave with original sketches and poems brought forth from our encounters with the
design and harmony of the natural world as well as with our own internal imaginative worlds.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Materials Needed by Students:
• Notebook or journal
• Pens or pencils
• Preferred writing pen
• Optional: a photograph, postcard, small found object, image of an artwork, family object, or
object of personal resonance
• Optional: colored pencils, markers, collage materials, or sketching supplies
Every Saturday, September 12-26 • 2-4pm
Ages: 18 & up
Cost for full series: $ 150 Member / $ 155 Not-Yet-Member
Classes:
Saturday, September 12
Saturday, September 19
Saturday, September 26
Sign up by Wednesday, September 10!
Refund Policy:
All classes, workshops, and series offered by the Center for the Arts are non-refundable.
Please email us at [email protected] to be added to the waitlist for any classes.
Each session introduces a different approach to poetry and artmaking: ekphrastic poetry, persona
poetry, and nature-based transformational writing. You will leave with a small body of original
poems and a deeper appreciation for the relationship between poetry, visual art, imagination,
nature, and lived experience.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Session 1: Enter the Canvas: An Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop
Ekphrasis is a literary description of or commentary on a visual work of art. This creative writing
workshop invites you to look deeply at visual art and encounter it with your five senses on the
page. Because both poetry and visual art speak to our imaginations through the power of images,
you will learn to use words and language as the poet’s paintbrush and encounter the art in a fresh
way.
I will be introducing ekphrastic poems from well-known poets and inviting everyone to reflect
on the way poetry can expand the depth of our love and engagement with visual art.
You will choose an artwork that causes an immediate reaction and explore what you see, feel, or
question. You will be encouraged to go beyond merely describing what is in the artwork by
making it personal, giving it a voice, capturing its energy and action with words, and adding your
own life and dimension to it.
You will leave with original ekphrastic poems filled with vivid images, colors, and metaphors
and a deeper appreciation for the relationship between visual art and poetry.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Session 2: Through the Mask: A Persona Poetry Workshop
The word persona derives from the Latin persona, meaning the mask worn by an actor. From the
ritual masks of the ancient Greek stage to the constructed identities of literature, theatre,
mythology, and popular culture, the mask has long offered artists a means of transformation. In
persona poetry, the writer assumes another voice, entering the consciousness of a figure,
character, or imagined presence.
This imaginative writing workshop invites you to step beyond the boundaries of autobiography
and inhabit a perspective other than your own.
Through close readings of persona poems and guided writing exercises, we will enter a
transformed place where we can freely explore truth outside of the confines of our own
individual identities.
Writing through persona offers both freedom and creative distance. Behind the mask, you can
experiment with unfamiliar styles, identities, emotional registers, and ways of seeing the world.
The workshop will also consider the relationship between speaker and poet: what becomes
possible when we write as another, and what aspects of ourselves may be revealed through the
act of disguise?
You will leave with original persona poems and a deeper understanding of poetic voice,
character, imagination, dramatic perspective, and the transformative possibilities of the mask.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Session 3: Transformational Art: An Art and Poetry Workshop
This interdisciplinary workshop invites you to explore the unique tactile composition of natural
forms such as a seashell, a feather, or a coconut. Through close observation, you will create
sketches and write poems that speak to each natural form, its place, and its function in the world
around us.
By moving between visual art and creative writing, you will engage with different parts of the
mind, body, imagination, and creative process while discovering new ways to see and interpret
the world around you.
You will study natural forms through visual observation, sketching, sensory detail, memory,
metaphor, and association. You will consider how elements of the natural world can become
vessels for story, image, feeling, and transformation.
You will leave with original sketches and poems brought forth from our encounters with the
design and harmony of the natural world as well as with our own internal imaginative worlds.
Designed for adults of all skill and experience levels.
Materials Needed by Students:
• Notebook or journal
• Pens or pencils
• Preferred writing pen
• Optional: a photograph, postcard, small found object, image of an artwork, family object, or
object of personal resonance
• Optional: colored pencils, markers, collage materials, or sketching supplies
Every Saturday, September 12-26 • 2-4pm
Ages: 18 & up
Cost for full series: $ 150 Member / $ 155 Not-Yet-Member
Classes:
Saturday, September 12
Saturday, September 19
Saturday, September 26
Sign up by Wednesday, September 10!
Refund Policy:
All classes, workshops, and series offered by the Center for the Arts are non-refundable.
Please email us at [email protected] to be added to the waitlist for any classes.
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Where is it happening?
Panama City Center for the Arts, 19 E 4th Street ,Panama City, Florida, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherPanama City Center for the Arts
