Thrilled to be Judging Queensland Poetry Festival’s Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award

I’m thrilled to have been asked (along with Queensland poet, Nathan Shepherdson) to co-judge this year’s Queensland Poetry Festival Philip Bacon Ekphrasis Award. This award, now in its third year, is named after one of Australia’s premier art dealers, Philip Bacon. The word ekphrasis comes from the Greek ek (out) & phrasis (speak), and is a rhetorical device in which a visual object, …

My Ekphrasis Was A Fraud: Or Was It?

Which came first, the picture or the poem?  In the case of a short verse I recently wrote, it was the poem. (A rather bleak one, which I paired with this picture by Scottish artist Thomas Faed, entitled ‘Faults on Both Sides’).  No dissimulation was intended and yet, when readers mistakenly assumed I had written an ekphrasis, I did not immediately …