'This prose poetry collection takes the reader through a gallery of European art, exploring modes of representation and the eddying connections between language and visual imagery. As it does so, it probes ways in which language ‘sees’, often in intimate ways. This collection also explores human history and culture, and the links between past and present—some works of art are like a form of memory and reach directly into viewers’ personal experiences. The gallery you encounter in these pages is notionally situated in Rome, but it is only fully constituted in these pages—containing, as it does, artworks on loan from elsewhere, such as Giorgione’s famous painting La Tempesta, usually housed in Venice. Although this book is made of words, it will conduct you on an unforgettable gallery tour.' (Publication summary)
Dedication: For Michelle
'To develop a meandering poetics specific to a ‘gallery’ ekphrastic poem, this paper examines the performance of the poetic line to create indeterminacy in two ekphrastic works published in 2016; Paul Hetherington’s Gallery of Antique Art and Ken Bolton’s ‘Dark Heart’. Whilst Hetherington’s work traverses a sequence of prose-poetic ‘rooms’ through his notionally ekphrastic gallery, Bolton’s poem is a scattered collage of his gallery experience, evading the traditionally ekphrastic mode of detached contemplation. Both poets bring the timeless properties of artworks in a gallery into the temporal flow of language by allowing for ‘detours’ to rupture the stilled time of the art-objects. Instead of approaching the artwork directly, the poet’s lived experience in the gallery space produces the poem, as an after effect of the poet’s failure to provide a comprehensive translation of the artworks contained within a gallery. Ekphrasis is posited as a creative and interpretive drive experienced by the poet, lived in the presence of an artwork or artworks, performed through the meandering poetic line.' (Introduction)
'To develop a meandering poetics specific to a ‘gallery’ ekphrastic poem, this paper examines the performance of the poetic line to create indeterminacy in two ekphrastic works published in 2016; Paul Hetherington’s Gallery of Antique Art and Ken Bolton’s ‘Dark Heart’. Whilst Hetherington’s work traverses a sequence of prose-poetic ‘rooms’ through his notionally ekphrastic gallery, Bolton’s poem is a scattered collage of his gallery experience, evading the traditionally ekphrastic mode of detached contemplation. Both poets bring the timeless properties of artworks in a gallery into the temporal flow of language by allowing for ‘detours’ to rupture the stilled time of the art-objects. Instead of approaching the artwork directly, the poet’s lived experience in the gallery space produces the poem, as an after effect of the poet’s failure to provide a comprehensive translation of the artworks contained within a gallery. Ekphrasis is posited as a creative and interpretive drive experienced by the poet, lived in the presence of an artwork or artworks, performed through the meandering poetic line.' (Introduction)
