Welcome to the Ekphrasis Poetry Submission Manager! You will find submission links to the current themed reading below these general guidelines - just scroll down.

Please join our Facebook group to get a feel for what we're looking for, see photographs of past readings, listen to recordings of Ekphrasis poems, and become a part of the community!

What to submit?

All poetic forms are welcome, from sonnets to spoken word to play excerpts to invented love letters to prose poems. Collaborations, performance pieces, and hybrid creative work are enthusiastically encouraged. The themes of the readings are intended to provide inspiration, not restriction; feel free to play with and interpret them in brilliant and unusual ways.

As Ekphrasis is dedicated to showcasing as many Oxfordshire poets as possible, poets who have read with Ekphrasis are asked to skip one reading before submitting again. This ensures that there will be spaces available for new voices to be represented. 

You may submit to more than one reading at a time, and you may submit up to five poems per reading.

Submissions are BLIND. Each poem will be chosen with no knowledge of the poet's identity or publication record. Please don't contact Jalina or the guest judges regarding your poem, or give any hints about which poem is yours, or which artwork you've chosen. If this happens, your poem will not be considered.

Which artwork to choose?

Ekphrasis readings have received enthusiastic responses from both the audiences and museum staff. Our inaugural reading was flooded with about 60 audience members! With those numbers in mind, a few 'crowd control' measures need to be taken into consideration. This affects the artwork you will choose. Please choose your artwork with the following in mind:

1. Small rooms/ galleries will not accommodate large audiences. Please steer clear of these. Think big.

2. On that note, the artwork also needs to be large. Small objects, statues, pieces of jewelry, etc. in display cases cause a lot of havoc when 60 people try to push their way forward to see the object clearly. Please choose artwork that can be clearly seen from a distance.

3. Make sure the area is well-lit. Rooms or displays in shadow aren't crowd-friendly.

Many thanks for your submission!