With heart-felt thanks to UNE Sydney. Starting on 4th February, we will meet once a month on a Saturday 3-5 pm, at 211 Church Street Parramatta, for tutorials, workshops and open mic – except when we launch Parramatta Expression in June and ZineWest in October at 100 George Street.
In 2023, NWG Inc will publish Parramatta images by local artists and invite Western Sydney writers to respond with an *ekphrastic poem or short prose. We are looking for images that have a hint of story, movement or mood. Here is an example by Michaela Simoni (first published in ZineWest 2022). Your work might be in a very different style, but we hope this image gives you a clue to the depth we are looking for.
The Ekphrastic project is open to all creatives in Parramatta and Western Sydney generally. These works will be published in a Pop Up Zine 2023 and some will also be republished in our digital Expression which is a good place for images. In January we will be sending around an entry form for writers, but art entries are open now, to help get the project underway by January: Parramatta Expression: ENTRY FORM (ART)
Parramatta Expression will also publish a print edition of our journal Expression which will include the works of a small 2022 NWG Inc workshop group that focussed on stories longer than we can usually print publish plus some poetry from ZineWest award-winning poets.
*Ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek… An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.”https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
“Basically, an ekphrasis is a literary description of art. Like other kinds of imagery, ekphrasis paints a picture with words. What makes it different from something like pictorialism is that the picture it paints is itself a picture: ekphrasis stages an encounter between representations in two mediums, one visual and one verbal.” https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/
Parramatta Expression 2023 has been supported by a City of Parramatta Council Community Grant.
Saturday, 13th November, 2021, we gathered on Zoom to explore the collection of poems, images and stories published during this year on Parramatta themes. This project is part of Writing Parramatta 2021 which has been supported by a City of Parramatta Creative Economy Grant.