Blog
Writing Poems About Paintings: an Interview with Jack Christian
by Writing Workshops Staff
5 days ago
Jack Christian knows that poetry doesn’t just live on the page—it moves, breathes, and dances with the world around us. As an award-winning poet and critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ArtForum, and Slate, Jack has spent his career exploring the tension between stillness and movement, description and imagination. His upcoming 6-week poetry workshop at WritingWorkshops.com dives headfirst into this dynamic interplay, teaching students how to use art as a springboard for their own poetic creations.
In this class, participants will embark on a communal exploration of ekphrasis—poetry inspired by visual art. Jack’s passion for this form shines through as he recalls how poets like Keats transformed the act of description into something revelatory, turning the static into the sublime. “By describing what I see, I make the artwork move,” Jack reflects, emphasizing how this process can awaken our own creativity and deepen our connection to the world.
Each week, students will craft and share their own ekphrastic poems, gaining inspiration from an array of evocative images and masterworks by poets like Anne Carson, Terrance Hayes, and Charles Simic. Jack promises a course rich in discovery, creativity, and community, culminating in a collective anthology of poems and artwork that will continue to inspire long after the course ends.
Whether you're a seasoned writer looking to invigorate your craft or a curious beginner ready to experiment with poetic form, this workshop offers a rare opportunity to unlock the stories hidden within the frame—and within yourself. As spring unfolds and creativity blooms, Jack invites you to join him in transforming wonder into words.
Let’s dive into the conversation and learn what awaits in this transformative journey.
Writing Workshops: You’ve mentioned that describing a painting automatically changes it. Can you discuss the tension between fidelity and creative transformation in ekphrastic writing? Is there a time you found yourself “altering” an artwork in ways that surprised you or even taught you something about your own creative process?
Jack Christian: This is a great question. I think that because any physical piece of art exists solidly in the world, I tend to leave fidelity aside and lean hard into creative transformation, but it’s tricky! I’m not sure ekphrastic writing “alters” a work of art so much as it collaborates with it. Ideally, I want the writing I produce to both stand on its own AND exist in evocative collaboration with whatever artwork it is responding to. As far as altering goes, it’s a deceptively simple excitement: In one of my first ekphrastic poems, about Beaudin’s Bathing Time in Deauville, I wrote the line “On the sky, a man hoists his horse.” What excites me about a line like this is how it is an accurate but defamiliarized description of the painting, which makes it concrete and surreal at once. I think that in-between space is often where I want to go in my poems. Looking at Impressionist painting, in this case, got me there in an immediate way.
(Eugene Boudin, Bathing Time at Deauville, 1865)
WW: Your new collection responds to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscape paintings. What first drew you to these particular styles, and in what ways have they challenged—or liberated—your sense of line, color, and metaphor in your poetry?
JC: I was brought back to Impressionist paintings during my first year teaching at University of North Texas (2018) when I incorporated some as an example for my first-year students who were reading an “impressionist” piece of literature (I forget what exactly). What struck me about these paintings, especially landscapes by Berthe Morisot and Alfred Sisley, was how their French and English landscapes uncannily resembled the North Texas landscape around me. Having grown up on the east coast, I was struggling to embrace my new surroundings. The paintings gave me a way to see the new place where I lived and to articulate what I found enticing and also troubling about it. This is to say, I’m not sure how they changed my sense of line, color, and metaphor, but they did seem to challenge and liberate something in my consciousness! (lol)
WW: Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is such an iconic example of ekphrasis. In your view, what lessons does Keats’s meditation on time and art offer today’s poets who are trying to capture the ‘still’ image of a painting in the ever-moving form of a poem?
JC: I think the lesson is how simple it can be: Keat’s is simply describing how close the lovers are to kissing. They are so close and yet they will never do it. That’s the whole thing. From there the floodgates open and he’s talking about Truth, Beauty, Love, and Death. The lesson is to allow yourself to describe accurately what you see -- to surrender to that description, the way in a yoga class you are supposed to surrender to corpse pose. Ekphrasis seems to lead unexpectedly to ecstasy. I guess what I’m saying is: creative transformation is the goal, but fidelity is sometimes the ticket to it.
WW: In the workshop, you encourage students to share images and poems with one another. Why is this communal approach so important to you, and how does it enhance or accelerate the creative process compared to working in isolation?
JC: I love the idea of working together to create a loose anthology of images and poems that can inspire us, and that we can look back at. If anything, I think these shared texts will help us create a shared vocabulary for our discussions of each other’s work and give us common examples to draw upon. My own experience in creative writing workshops is that when this inspiring conversation takes off, we can feel great energy to contribute to the group effort, and end up writing things we would never have written if not for the communal endeavor.
WW: Painting and poetry can each feel like a solitary pursuit, yet you mention getting outside and even writing en plein air. What does physically being in nature add to the experience of writing about landscape art, and how might it transform the poems your students produce?
JC: I’m not sure the historical reason that April is national poetry month, but to me it seems obvious that April, when many of us begin to spend more time outdoors (or else begin lamenting the weather for not cooperating… “April is the cruellest month”) is a natural time of poetic production. WIth this class, I’m hoping we can join with painters whose practice took place mostly outside as a way to see further into their work and our own. Being outside might make us more aware of all five senses, and maybe how the senses beyond the visual might be inflecting our own work and the artwork we consider.
WW: You’ve published poetry, art criticism, and essays in a wide range of venues. How do these different modes of writing inform one another, especially when you’re translating visual art into a literary form? Is there a symbiotic relationship among criticism, poetry, and personal essays?
JC: I’m sure these different modes inform each other but I’m not entirely sure how. In my case most recently, writing poems about paintings began to give me a critical stance and insight that allowed me to write criticism and personal essays. Then, as I thought more critically and read more art criticism, these things informed my own poetry writing. It’s been symbiotic in that way. To me the biggest key is simply writing--in whatever mode--about what one is drawn to. Accidentally stumbling onto writing about Impressionist landscapes has been a great lesson in allowing myself to go where I feel pulled, to follow the energy.
WW: Many poets find ekphrastic writing both liberating and daunting. What are some of the most common fears or misconceptions you’ve seen students bring to this form, and how do you coach them past those doubts?
JC: I think the biggest misconception has to do with feeling some obligation to not stray too far from the artwork to which one responds. I’d encourage students to allow themselves the freedom to go in whatever direction they feel led, even and especially if it means leaving the artwork behind. The goal is to write a good poem. The artwork’s feelings won’t be hurt if we stray too far from it :)
WW: We live in a digital age flooded with images of artworks from around the globe. Do you feel that easy access to so many paintings broadens the possibilities for ekphrasis, or can it ever dilute the intimate act of looking and responding? How do you navigate that balance in your own writing?
JC: I do think our over-saturation with images broadens the possibilities for ekphrasis. More than that, I think ekphrasis is an increasingly necessary and interesting response to this situation, this age of digital reproduction. Some of my own work is almost an ekphrasis of a Google image search -- i.e. an ekphrasis of an abundance of poorly rendered representations of a painting. Ekphrasis gives us a way to think about and discuss this situation. I think the over-abundance of images DOES dilute the intimate act of looking, but that ekphrasis gives us a way to speak about that dilution and degradation. Impressionist paintings are a great example of this: Their ubiquity has made them almost a mental wallpaper for many of us, which in turn messes with, and maybe cheapens our concept of the beautiful, while also stripping those paintings of their social and political efficacy. In my own case, I hope that writing about the images and also the situation of viewing the images, usually on my computer, can reclaim some of the dimension that is lost -- reclaim what is lost from the paintings, but, maybe most intensely, what is lost from me, from all of us.
Avoid the waitlist and sign up for Jack Christian's upcoming class: Writing Poems about Paintings.
Instructor Jack Christian is the author of the poetry collections Family System (2012 Colorado Prize, U Press Colorado) and Domestic Yoga (2016, Groundhog Poetry Press). He is working on a third collection of poems that respond to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist landscape paintings. His poetry, art criticism, and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ArtForum, Slate, Cleveland Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
