Beyond Ekphrasis: Encounters with Poetry & Visual Art

Looking at looking; positioning the self; translating image into poem.

What happens when we encounter a work of art? How do poems emerge from acts of looking, misremembering, interpreting, questioning, desiring, or resisting? In this course, we’ll explore the rich territory where poetry and visual art meet, moving beyond traditional ekphrasis to experiment with a range of creative responses to images, objects, exhibitions, and encounters with art. 

Across five assignments, we’ll write with, through, alongside, and against visual art. Through approaches including description, personification, address, catalogues and captions, we’ll explore how poems can enter into dialogue with artworks and the worlds that surround them. Along the way, we’ll ask not only what we see when we look at art, but who is looking, from where, and under what conditions. 

Drawing inspiration from experimental poets and artists including Lucy Mercer, Jean-Luc Champerret, Astra Papachristodoulou, Henri Matisse, Jamie Crewe and others, we’ll develop new strategies for looking, making connections, and generating poems from visual experience. We’ll also briefly consider examples of visual and concrete poetry, and artworks that use text as material, as a way of expanding our sense of what these exchanges can look like. By the end of the course, you’ll have a toolkit of techniques for engaging imaginatively with artworks, exhibitions, objects, and visual culture.

5 fortnightly sessions over 10 weeks, starting 8 October 2026. No live chats. Suitable for UK & International students.  

Concessions & Accessibility

To apply for a concession rate, please send relevant documentation showing your eligibility for one of our concessions to [email protected]. Conditions of eligibility are detailed here. If you have any questions or wish to be added to the waiting list of a sold-out course, please email [email protected].

What to Expect

Please check the left hand side of this page for information on how this course works in practice, under the heading ‘Course Style‘. If you’re unsure as to what any of the terms there mean, or if this course is a good fit for you, please visit our What to Expect page which includes some further information on how our courses function.

Image credit: @Fabian Bächli

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