Ekphrastic Folk Art Season 2, #3

 What Happens When Folk Art Gets Ekphrastic?

To find out, I invited several writers to mix it up; to play with this folkloric image. Using their literary talents, they did just that. Jumping right into the challenge, they created inspiring storylines and conversations. 

But before I show you the results for this issue of Season 2, here are brief explanations of what folk art and ekphrastic are. 

What is Folk Art? 

Folk art, in general - art made by folk - is 'decorative' art applied to functional (everyday) items. Popular examples include weather vanes, furniture, quilts, and hand painted plates.

What is Ekphrastic?

Ekphrastic is a term that describes the practice of using words in poetry and prose to comment on or about a piece of visual art (i.e., painting, photograph, sculpture) and has been around since ancient times. For example, in The Iliad Homer provides lengthy discursive accounts of elaborate scenes on Achilles' shield (an every day, functional item).

The word ekphrasis is a combination of two Greek words: ex (out) and phrazein (to point out, explain). 

Be sure to check out Season 1 in our flipbook library. 

Now, onto the excellent and innovative poetry and prose of Paul Brookes, Preston Danvers, Sam Szanto, and K Weber!

======

To Dart Along

Not to dart along. Stilled. Here. 
A life painted on. Dry docked.
No shoal, no fleet. Alone.
Not line caught. Scales of grain crack.
Unworked, unworking. Stopped. Stopped.
The unsunk boat perforated
By worms aswim as rot. Here.

 

Paul Brookes is a shop asst, writer, editor and reviewer. His chapbooks include Ever Striding Edge, (Dark Winter Press, 2024). "The Dude Work," (Sherwood Press). Forthcoming: "Ganders: New And Selected Poems". He edits The Wombwell Rainbow and The Starbeck Orion.  

https://thewombwellrainbow.wordpress.com

======

Oasis

White flakes stained on cold, damp rust.
A boat with better days
is just as moving
as one on Lake Michigan,
a hand on chipped paint.
Waves kind, water void:
a generational gift,
a junkyard love child.
Scales coral-bright, one
with bowfins, trout—the storm’s eye,
a jewel lost to time.

Is this fresh fallen snow?

Preston Danvers (he/him) holds an MA in English literature and writes poetry. His work appears in Fairy Tale Review, Tilde, and Perhappened, among others.

Here's where he can be found talking about baking and fairy tales: 

https://www.instagram.com/prestonspantry/

======

She always wanted to live by the sea

always talked about a life spent
painting, fishing, chatting
with dog walkers and café owners.

I use the money she leaves me

to buy a fishing boat, talk about

restoring it. 

My daughter waits

with brushes and paints.

We create gills and scales,

a hungry mouth, a heavy-lidded eye.

Inside the fish, writhing in stasis,

we place a serpent. ‘Eva’,

after my mother, on the starboard.

She always wanted to live by the sea.

She could never leave.

 

Sam Szanto, an award-winning, Pushcart prize-nominated writer, lives in Durham (UK). Her poetry pamphlet 'This Was Your Mother' was published by Dreich Press, 2024, and 'Splashing Pink' (with Annie Cowell), Hedgehog Press, 2023 was a Poetry Book Society Winter Pamphlet Choice. She also writes short stories; her debut collection 'If No One Speaks' was published by Alien Buddha Press, 2022.

https://www.samszanto.com/

 ======

brush-stroked

someone ship-jumped

long ago: their rough-worn

vessel left knee-high in weeds

like a shack’s debris. it became

its own bole-drift. those land-

addled, wood-swelled, dehydrated

boat bones once creaked their

empty-bodied last song.

but at long last, the captain

returns, artist-handed. the ship

now canvas and fish-inspired, a sea-

glass blue-spangled eye gets

wide as gills breathing berry-colored

life. smart outlines, as emphasized

as map-drawn waterways, now

keep the captain afloat.

K Weber is an Ohio writer with 11 online books of poetry. K writes independently and collaboratively, having created poems from words (& more!) donated by over 300 people since 2018. K's work and publishing credits: 

https://kweberandherwords.com

 

 

Ekphrastic Folk Art Season 2 #2

 

 What Happens When Folk Art Gets Ekphrastic?

To find out, I invited several writers to mix it up; to play with this folkloric image. Using their literary talents, they did just that. Jumping right into the challenge, they created inspiring storylines and conversations. 

                            

But before I show you the results for this issue of Season 2, here are brief explanations of what folk art and ekphrastic are. 

What is Folk Art? 

Folk art, in general - art made by folk - is 'decorative' art applied to functional (everyday) items. Popular examples include weather vanes, furniture, quilts, and hand painted plates.

What is Ekphrastic?

Ekphrastic is a term that describes the practice of using words in poetry and prose to comment on or about a piece of visual art (i.e., painting, photograph, sculpture) and has been around since ancient times. For example, in The Iliad Homer provides lengthy discursive accounts of elaborate scenes on Achilles' shield (an every day, functional item).

The word ekphrasis is a combination of two Greek words: ex (out) and phrazein (to point out, explain). 

Be sure to check out Season 1 in our flipbook library. 

Now, onto the excellent and innovative poetry and prose of Donna Faulkner, Karin Hedetniemi, Sylvia Santiago, and Jenny Wong.

======

Crafting

Another stitch,   then   another. 
Clotho guides
the threads her fingers weave
the tale
unfolds
A long exhale
The fabric breathes …
Another thread,   then    another.
Sisters   gather   spin familiars.
Craft a village   green,
sing their Mother’s  home.
Another stitch,
another thread.
A hundred   times, a thousand years.
Although her eyesight   fades,
and knuckles crack
she could   make   this   magic
in her sleep.

 
Donna Faulkner’s books include ‘In Silver Majesty’ (erbacce press) and ‘The Oracle of birds - short stories for the fireside’  (Written Tales).  Her work also appears in  300 Days of Sun, Havik, Fieldstone Review, and others.
 https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner Instagram @lady_lilith_poet/
 
======
 
Chanh is the Moon
 
It was one of the happiest days of my childhood: harvesting mangoes with bamboo sticks, dancing in breezes, birdsong, and the singing voices of my village. Grandmother stitched a story cloth with the saved threads of her long life. For five days, I watched her trembling hands pull the needle with wool strands through a bright green cloth. She finished her work, adding honey strokes of sunlight to steep mountain ridges. When I am older, I said, I will climb these mountains with Father and see you waving from here. I pointed to the small, thatched house embroidered beside the spirit house. Grandmother placed the cloth on my lap and touched my cheek. When you are older, she said softly with her kind, half-moon eyes, I will see you everywhere.

 
 Karin Hedetniemi photographs and writes from Victoria, Canada. Her place-inspired creative work appears in many international literary journals, including Grain, EVENT, Lunch Ticket, and Welter. In spring 2025, her award-winning haiku will be celebrated at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival.
https://agoldenhour.com Bluesky/Instagram: @karinhedet
 
 
======
 
La Paz, 1950
 
Bubalus bubalis / what a magical way to name a carabao / like its horns / the words curve gently / it sounds like a spell to my seven-year-old ears / in the photograph / my Lola is about the same age as me / sitting astride a carabao / she wears a sundress and a grin / the photograph / is black and white / but my grandmother remembers / the rice seedlings in the field / glinting greenly in the sunlight / the carabao’s coarse hide / dark as soot / the blue of the skies / cerulean / the blue of the ocean / she’d cross fifteen years later / to a new country / to a place where the sun never truly warms her / a place where she never wears the same smile
 

Sylvia Santiago is a writer from western Canada whose work has appeared in Flash Frontier, Heavy Feather Review, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere.
x: @sylviasays2 
 
======
 
Stitchings
 
A needle’s flicker,
the sharp sputter of steel
as mopeds and roads
zigzag across roughed edges of green. Noon
air is heat-thick, a batting of chatter-
ing birds and metal sounds.
Her favorite time is morning
when mountains
cross-stitch their shadows
along the horizon, and a silent hem
of light peeks beneath a blackness
pinned with stars. New shoots
poke through the dark eye of soil
and watch tamarind trees tuck
the golden stains of sunrise
into their seeds. But in the end,
there is always the heaviness
of scissors or the white snip
of teeth, and all she can think about is how
to hide the knots, the abrupt ends of thread
fraying wordless beneath the long length
of another day.
 

Jenny Wong’s debut chapbook is ‘Shiftings & other coordinates of disorder’ (Pinhole Poetry). She is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst.  Her favorite places to wander are Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centers, and Parisian cemeteries. She resides in Canada.  
https://opencorners.ca/about  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jenwithwords

November Food Lore

  

The Lore 

of Cranberries

Cranberries date back to medieval Europe, where they were known as marsh-worts, fen-worts, and moss-berries. Across the Atlantic Ocean, Native Americans living in the America’s were also eating and using cranberries for centuries before settlers even came to the America’s and eventually incorporated them into their Thanksgiving dinner. 

Traditionally found in bog or swamp environments, cranberries grow on a vine that can be found mostly submerged in water, which perpetuates the common misconception that they grow under water. The settler’s term “cranberry” was derived from the fact that the appearance of the berry was similar to that of the beak and head of a crane. Native Americans, who used the fruit in its raw form as well as dried out to preserve meats, preferred their original term, sassamensesh.

Due to the bitter, sour taste of the cranberry it was and still is most commonly sweetened and used as a condiment or side dish. There is no proof that cranberries were incorporated into the first Thanksgiving dinner between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans, which took place in October 1621, but it is believed that the Native Americans may have brought it as a generous contribution. The prime harvesting time for cranberries takes place between September to December, which would allow for the perfect ripe cranberries for the Native Americans to share with their newfound kin.

Overtime, cranberries continued to have a significant impact on the New England food scene, quickly becoming a staple for the holiday season. The Cape Cod Cranberry Company, who marketed the product as, “Ocean Spray Cape Cod Cranberry Sauce”, first canned cranberries in 1912. 

Cranberries are most often prepared during Thanksgiving dinner in the United States and Canada and during Christmas in the United Kingdom. 

The preparation and taste of cranberry sauce varies depending on the area it was harvested and the ingredients added. Almonds, orange juice, zest, maple syrup, port, and cinnamon are all common flavors added for sweetness. The versatile fruit can be transformed into a variety of delectable treats such as cranberry bread, cranberry pistachio biscotti, and cranberry chocolate devil’s food cake.

Related Information

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Cranberry Cole Slaw Recipe