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Artwork copyright . Jack Archibald. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Madrona Poetry Project: "Art in a Public Voice" – An Ekphrastic Poetry Collection

Over the summer of 2022, we were honored to be a small part of an exciting project: The Madrona Project: Art in a Public Voice, an ekphrastic poetry collection pairing poems and images of public art in the Pacific Northwest. An "ekphrastic poem" is a poem written about a work of art!

ArtsWA's participation was simply to provide images for publication of some artworks in Washington's State Art Collection that poets chose to write about. Here you can see all of the State Art Collection works that are included in the book.

Edited by Samuel Green (Washington’s Inaugural Poet Laureate, 2007-2009), Sally Green, and Michael Daley, The Madrona Project: Art in a Public Voice contains over fifty full-color images with ekphrastic poems by such renowned Northwest poets as: Rena Priest (Washington Poet Laureate, 2021-2023), Ed Harkness, Holly Hughes, Tim McNulty, Sam Green, Sally Green, Alicia Hokansen, Linda Bierds, Kathleen Flenniken (Washington Poet Laureate, 2012-2014), Carmen Germain, Sharon Hashimoto, Jill McCabe Johnson, Priscilla Long, Mercedes Lawry, Robert Michael Pyle, Bill Ransom, Kim Stafford, and many others.

You can purchase The Madrona Project: Art in a Public Voice online at the Empty Bowl website at www.emptybowl.org or from your local bookseller. Empty Bowl is an independent press founded in 1976 in the Pacific Northwest as a cooperative letterpress publisher.