Finding the Form with Brenda Sciberras - The New Quarterly Digital Edition

Back in 2013 a dear friend, artist, art teacher, and colleague gifted me a book. “The Art of Mary Pratt: The Substance of Light,” by Tom Smart. It was a beautiful hardcover with colour prints and the story of a talented female artists’ creative life. This planted the seed for my manuscript, “Riddled with Red.” The title, (Mary’s own words) is taken from a CBC documentary. When I heard of Mary Pratt’s passing in the summer of 2018, that became the catalyst for me to start writing the poems for this collection.

As I studied many of her prints, I began experimenting with the ekphrasis form. It seemed logical to write about what spoke to me in each painting, and what drew me to one over another.

Ekphrasis is a Greek word used for the written or verbal description of a work of art, either real or imagined. It can also be a way to voice the experience of viewing a piece of art or about the artist who created it.

At one point I realized that Mary’s paintings were themselves a type of ekphrasis. Realism was Mary’s form of expression, and she used a camera to capture her subjects in their best light. She would use the developed slides that she had taken and paint her own interpretation of what she saw. One medium transformed into another form of art. I in turn, the viewer of her paintings and prints, used words to convey, interpret, and imagine, what I saw, by creating poetry.

I had read a few other poet’s works written about female artists: Arleen Pare’s collection of poems, “Girls with Stone Faces” and Linda Frank’s, “Kaho: The World Split Open.” Their poetry influenced my decision to write a collection honouring the life of Mary Pratt. It includes a couple dozen poems in the ekphrasis form as well as many more poems inspired by Mary’s life and art. Three of the poems from Riddled with Red appear in TNQ, issue 167.

Brenda Sciberras is an award-winning poet. Her first collection Magpie Days won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book in 2015. Starland, her most recent book of poetry, was launched with Turnstone Press in 2018.

Header photo courtesy of Sarah R on Flickr.