SEA TO SKY REVIEW
EKPHRASTIC POETRY -
What do you see?
VOLUME 5. ISSUE 2. NOVEMBER 2024
We’re very pleased to share with our readers this excellent collection of Ekphrastic Poetry. Each of these poets found inspiration in an image and, through their poetry, has gifted us something we might not have experienced otherwise. Elly Katz’s story of Bathsheba and her terrible decision, Leah Wu’s breathtaking presentation of a headless and armless Winged Victory, Spencer Keene’s ode to a metal Tyrannosaurus, and Hugh Findlay’s mother walking the plaza in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In each of these contributions, and all the others, we are able to not only meet the image, but the poets themselves as they reveal parts of their own stories in the writing. If you ever wondered what the point of Ekphrastic Poetry is, you have your answer in this issue of Sea to Sky Review 2024.
Also included for your enjoyment is The Transitory Space, a gallery of mesmerizing photos by Leah Oates, along with a review of Brian Michal Barbeito’s recent book of photography and prose.
Cover photo: The Librarian, a painting in oils on canvas by the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
POETRY
Feature Gallery
The Transitory Space
Leah Oates
The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions and a continual human imprint. In everyone and in everything there are daily changes and this series articulates fluctuation in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space.
Humans leave traces and artifacts of our consciousness everywhere in our environment. Contradictory realities can be found co-existing wherever we look. They’re in what we choose to think; what we choose to believe; and, how we choose to act. And, they can be found in what we choose to observe.
When I look back on a moment it’s full of impressions and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses.
Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks, recording the ephemeral. Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience. We are always living in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world more accurately.
Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence.
