Edgeworks: Ekphrastic Encounters

Preface

This chapbook began, as many living projects do, with a phone call. Carla Shafer of the Chuckanut Sandstone Writers Theater reached out to me with the vision of co-creating an ekphrastic writing workshop inside He Gong: Maps of No Return exhibition at Sophia Grace Gallery. From that invitation unfolded a weekend where poets gathered in the presence of paintings, listening with their eyes and writing with their ears.

Ekphrasis is never mere description; it is encounter. To write in response to an image is to translate pigment into pulse, to find words that do not explain but rather echo the visual field. Here, world, word, and art intersect to expand the horizon of human consciousness. Sophia Grace Gallery is committed to such syncretic endeavors—where visual and literary practices converge to create new forms of meaning.

This collection is also the fruit of community. My gratitude extends to Jannette Rosebrook, John S. Green, and the Bellingham Haiku Association, whose presence and poetic spirits gave shape to this work; to Tere Harrison, whose Prompt series has become a vital venue for poets, musicians, and performers; and to each poet who lent voice to He Gong’s maps of exile, freedom, and return.

May this chapbook be not an end but a beginning, the first of many projects where art and poetry meet to illuminate the uncharted territories of our shared imagination.

–Dr. Sophia Kidd, September 21, 2025, Ferndale, WA, USA
Sophia Grace Gallery, Founding Director
Igneus Press, Publisher

Poets in Edgeworks

Michelle Balou

Elaine Miller Bond

Paula Brown

Bridges, Green, Ortiz

Gary Evans

John S. Green

Tere Harrison

Sophia Grace Kidd
Janet Hamilton

Carol MacRury

Js nahani