Painting for Poets, Poetry for Painters
"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting
that speaks."
Simonides, De Gloria Atheniensium, III
Michelangelo, Rosetti, Blake, Rexroth, Patchen, Tagore, Bishop: all
poets who were also painters. The creative impulse begins in
the body, what Frost called “the lump in the throat” that
drives us to seek expression. Even though the language of poetry
is referred to as “image,” often, the “picture” being
presented is not visual but instead the imagined realms of feeling,
smell, sound or taste. It’s registered in the body as a
generative impulse by the writer and as a response by the reader, what
Dickinson referred to as feeling as if the top of her head had been
lifted off. Painting too starts in the body and rides the imagination
through the physical markings of the paint. The viewer secretes the
painting, following the trace of the artist’s moving hand in
the paint. It is a language, like poetry rooted in the body’s
biology and physical rhythms while opening out into the vastness of
the human psyche.
This intensive workshop in painting and poetry will provide opportunities
for deep exploration in both genres. Participants will be free to follow
whatever field of exploration they wish, using the facilitators and
the farm to help them explore their own creativity. We will investigate
how to connect with the body’s creative desire in words, colors,
textures and visual images. Individual studio time and/or writing
time will be balanced with review and feedback by workshop facilitators.
Spring Hills Farm is on several hundred beautiful
acres in the Endless Mountains of N.E. Pennsylvania.
Crystal Bacon’s first book, Elegy
with A Glass of Whiskey, was selected as the 2003 BOA Editions,
Ltd. New Poetry America prize. She is a 1995 graduate of the
Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her work has appeared
in a variety of publications in the US and Canada, including the Cortland
Review, Ontario Review, Tampa Review, Massachusetts
Review, Marlboro Review, and Antigonish Review as
well as the anthologies, Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing
Witness to the Holocaust, and Urban Nature: Poems about
Wildlife in the City. She is an Assistant Professor of
English at the Community College of Philadelphia and lives in New
Hope, Pennsylvania.
Tim Hawkesworth grew up in Ireland, immigrated to
the US in 1977. He has been showing in New York and other cities around
the country and in Europe since the early 1980s. His work has received
considerable critical attention including reviews in the New York Times,
Art News, the New Yorker, and the LA Times. His writings have
been published by several art magazines. He lectures and teaches around
the country. His work is in many public and private collections including
the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He is represented
by Littlejohn Contemporary in New York and The Peyton Wright Gallery
in Santa Fe. His work will be featured this September at the Royal
Hibernian Academy in Dublin.
for more about Spring Hills Farm visit:
springhillsfarm.org
