Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020: Editor’s Choice
Image: “Open All Night” by Kate Peper. “Cheer” was written by Sean Kelbley for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.
Comment from the editor, Timothy Green: “I realized I’d be choosing this poem four lines in: ‘How much of 17 is trying to stand convincingly / in places you’re not old enough to be?’ How true is that? And how interesting a thought. Those two lines would have been enough for me, but then the last lines are just as good. I’ve never been a high school teacher, but I understand the student-teacher relationship considerably better for having read this poem.”
“An Index of Visitors” by Ajay KumarPosted by Rattle
Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020: Artist’s Choice
Image: “Open All Night” by Kate Peper. “An Index of Visitors” was written by Ajay Kumar for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2020, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
Comment from the artist, Kate Peper: “Ted Kooser wrote, ‘… I hope that after I have labored over my poems … they look as if they’d been dashed off in a few minutes, the way good watercolor paintings look.’ One of the many things I love about this poem—and why I kept coming back to it—was that it embodied the very essence of what Ted Kooser wrote: immediacy, quickness and unexpected moments. I’m also a sucker for surreal imagery. And this poem manages to link ‘by a skeleton of ladders’ all its wild bounty into something beautiful and cohesive, and yet elusive. In the end, the poet’s attempt—like my attempt to paint a street scene at night—realizes it can never be captured: ‘… it was gone,/ it was also there, waving & particle, all the time.’”
Kate Peper: “Though I was raised Lutheran, I didn’t jump into Christianity until a few years ago. My faith is growing daily in small but significant increments: Every time I pray and ask for help—even if it’s to write a poem—I receive God’s grace and am blessed with humility and strength, which in turn strengthens my faith. In the past four years I’ve seen how my painting and poetry have been quietly inspired by this new sense of looking at the world.” (web)
Kate Peper: “Last year I was fired from a ‘very respected job’ as a custom rug designer. It was a job I had just spent three years trying to get. After the typical free-fall and confusion that followed, I realized I wanted to spend most of my time writing and painting—two things I never really had any training in nor, I knew, would make much money. These days, I work part-time at a flower store, write constantly, paint, design rugs on the side and daydream a lot.”