I was incredibly thrilled to hear that the Mass Poetry Festival was returning for 2021, as it has been an incredible source of inspiration and community for me for years. I was even more happy to see that as part of this year’s festival, they were running a contest for the creation of ekphrastic poetry (a personal favorite). They invited any and all to respond poetically to any of 12 works of art from those in the Montserrat College of Art community, and the top poem for each piece would be exhibited online and also be sold as broadsheet posters to support MassPoetry.

I am honored and excited to say that my poem, “Manifest,” inspired by the painting “Being Perfect is a Very Unrealistic Expectation” was chosen to be part of the exhibition and the broadsheet publication.

The girl is a ghost
made of moonlight and movement
blue smoke in the mirror
of a reflecting pool world.

You can use the link above to jump straight to my poem, or you can visit the whole exhibit here:

Mass Poetry Online Ekphrastic Gallery

If you are so inspired, you can purchase any of the broadsides from the gallery here. (Bit of vanity, direct link to mine is here.)