Some thoughts on ekphrastic poetry

“The earliest examples of ekphrastic poetry are not, it seems, principally focused on painting, but on utilitarian objects…Goblets, urns, vases, chests, cloaks, girdles, various sorts of weapons and armour, and architectural ornaments like friezes, reliefs, frescos and statues”

(Extract from "Ekphrasis and the Other" by W. J. T. Mitchell in Picture Theory, published by The University of Chicago Press, 1994).

I’d always assumed that ekphrastic poetry had to be about visual art like paintings or sculpture. I didn't realize that the term can also apply to poems about more ordinary objects. But in the above quote, this widely-held assumption is challenged. Ekphrastic poetry is seen as a practice that goes right back to the descriptions of the shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad.

In his essay, Mitchell makes clear that ekphrasis is not solely about the visual aspect of works of art or other objects, but could also be about their smell, taste, feel, sound, and so on. Or it could be to do with the affordances of things, in the sense of the various actions and functions they might perform for a user. Or the actions involved in the making of an object – such as the skilled accomplishments of the craftsman who made Achilles’ shield. Going even beyond that, it could be about the very being or ‘is-ness’ of things, quite separate from any embodied human engagement or perceptual experience of them. 

Vessels in the form of jars, urns, goblets, cups, pots or bowls seem to be an important class of object for much ekphrastic poetry, as in Anecdote of a Jar by Wallace Stevens, or Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. 

One can hardly compare my own verse to those classics, but I cannot help reflecting on things I’ve written myself. The question arises for me as to whether the poems in my chapbook Embodied Things are also ekphrastic. The poems deal with museum exhibits rather than paintings or sculptures in an art gallery - ordinary things of utilitarian rather than artistic value. The objects 'speak' through the poems.

Take just one of the objects as an example - a little blue-and-white 17th century jug (the woodcut print is by Jeff Benjamin). 

Woodcut print by Jeff Benjamin

Mary's Jug 

The object has a story attached to it, rooted in local folklore going back generations. Tradition has it that this was the jug used by Bunyan’s blind daughter, Mary, to carry soup from her home on the edge of Bedford to the County Gaol in the middle of town where her father was imprisoned - a distance of a quarter of a mile. She then had to repeat the journey in the other direction bringing the empty vessel back home again. 

When thinking of the jug being carried by a non-sighted person, its appearance does not seem so important. The striking blue-and-white colours hardly seem to matter very much. What matters more than its ‘look’ is its ‘feel’ - the textures of its surfaces and the sense of its grooves and protuberances to the touch, the fit of the handle to the hands, its weight (which would vary according to whether the jug was empty or full). 

Its affordances in relation to other objects and materials and spaces are important too. And let us not forget the warmth radiated to the hands when it is full of hot broth. The steam that would arise from it. The smell and taste of the soup. And so on. 

Of course we cannot have direct tactile experience of the jug ourselves because it is contained within a glass cabinet, and we are unable to pick it up and touch it. But we can imagine and evoke these sensual experiences, and poetry can arguably help us do that.  

Ekphrastic? Or not ekphrastic? 

You can read the poem here: