Ekphrasis: A Poetry of Seeing

 

Ekphrasis: A Poetry of Seeing – Douglas Sandle

 

Richard Wilcocks writes:

 

Douglas Sandle is a retired chartered psychologist, researcher and academic who worked for much of his career in art, design and architecture at what was once Leeds Metropolitan University and is now Leeds Beckett. This history was very apparent in Headingley Library on Thursday 10 March when, with the help of a Powerpoint display, he revealed the depth of his knowledge.

 

He made it clear that there is nothing new about Ekphrasis, travelling back to Ancient Greece to make his point by reading a few lines taken from a lengthy section of Homer’s Iliad which describe the shield of Achilles. The word was originally applied to the skill of describing a thing in vivid detail:

 

And first Hephaestus makes a great and massive shield

blazoning well-wrought emblems all across its surface,

raising a rim around it, glittering…

 

The word gradually became used just for poetry (sometimes prose) which describes, or is inspired by, works of art. After showing some entertaining examples of works of art which employ optical illusions, he moved on to more modern examples of ekphrastic poetry, beginning with a poem inspired by a painting by the French artist Jean-François Millet, entitled Man With A Hoe. Written by the American poet Edwin Markham, it caused something of a sensation after it was published in the San Francisco Examiner and led to a debate on the conditions and exploitation of agricultural workers at that time. It was used in campaigns to support Labour rights and for better working conditions, which led to changes. 

 

 

Man with Hoe

 

After seeing the famous Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Breughel the Elder on the screen and listening to Douglas Sandle’s eloquent commentary on the poem which refers to it – W H Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, we moved on to a survey of Ekphrastic poetry today. He mentioned in particular the contemporary competitions for Ekphrastic poetry, including one by the Poetry Society which included children and younger writers. Carcanet Press in 2015 published a glossy 100-page book of poems  by Owen Lowery, along with the art works by Paula Rego which had inspired them. There was a special mention of the online monthly publication The Ekphrastic Review, founded by ekphrastic writer Lorette Lukajic, which has published two of Douglas Sandle’s own poems.

 

One of these was Liquorice Allsorts, the poem inspired by the Patrick Hughes work of art with the same name. Another was inspired by one of Hughes’s ‘rainbow’ paintings – Leaning on a Landscape. He read several poems with Manx connotations which connected with his own childhood, then arrived at a group of images by his sculptor brother, Michael Sandle RA. One of these, Der Trommler (The Drummer), which is exhibited in Tate Britain, I found particularly memorable:

 

 

It comes from a distance far away,

resonating in the head. A troubled rumble

that grows into a drum deep boom.

The drummer marches and treads into view.

Closer now, his hands flick, wrists rotate,

his helmeted and faceless head

stares down at his muscular body,

solid and taut as steel.

This is no dancing rhythm or playful beat,

Nor a rat- a-tat- tat for acrobatic tricks,

But a doom-laden call to arms,

Its awesome prescience echoing

by the rivers and dark marshes

of the Styx