(DC) (National Museum of Asian Art) In this workshop, you’ll learn to write poetry based on visual art by using paintings in the exhibition Shifting Boundaries: Perspectives on American Landscapes. Learn ekphrastic poetry techniques from poet Ariana Benson, including the use of vivid sensory language, fabulation of narrative within and beyond the frame, and lyric persona as a means of radical reclamation and world-building.

First, you’ll spend time in the gallery space, observing the works and developing drafts of your poems. Then you’ll further develop and share your drafts in the final portion of the workshop. You’ll leave with new knowledge of poetic histories and techniques, your own drafts (or completed poems), and new means of engaging visual art and the museum space as a whole.

This program is presented in partnership with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.