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Reverse Ekphrasis Contest

The Details

Calling all artists! Every two weeks throughout the spring and summer, we will share a poem from various Appalachian poets and an excerpt from Ann Pancake’s Strange As This Weather Has Been. We are looking for you to choose a piece from our collection as inspiration for a brand new piece of art that will form an exhibit on display during the festival. The poems and excerpts are also available on our website.

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Awards:

- $250 Outstanding Student Artwork Award

- $250 Outstanding Adult Artwork Award

- $50 for each piece chosen for the exhibit

- $250 Teacher Educator Award (awarded to a teacher chosen by the student winner)

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Poems, Excerpts, and Songs of Inspiration:

  • April 14 - "Night After Night" by Kari-Gunter Seymour & Excerpt from Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

  • April 28 - "The Power of Ain't" by Willie Carver & "53 Years" by Megan Bee

  • May 12 - "Their War on Poverty" by Pauletta Hansel & Excerpt from Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

  • May 26 - "Be Water" by Wendy McVicker & "We Are Rocks" by Megan Bee

  • June 9 - "Ars Poetica" by Marianne Worthington & Excerpt from Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

  • June 23 - "Deep Water" by Ron Rash & "Be Water" by Megan Bee

  • July 7 - "Sailing" by Linda Parsons & Excerpt from Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

  • July 21 - "TBD & "Fickle" by Megan Bee

  • August 4 - "TBD" & Excerpt from Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

  • August 18 - "TBD & "When the Beach is Asleep" by Megan Bee

How to Enter

Deadline: August 25th, 2025

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Art should be no bigger than 24x36 in either direction, gallery-ready, and able to be hung on the wall. To enter, email alasfestival1024@gmail.com the following two things:

  • a PDF that contains

    • the title of the poem/excerpt chosen for inspiration

    • artist information: name, age, state/county of residence, and a 50 word bio.

  • a separate digital copy of the art piece saved as: title_artist name

Ann Pancake
Excerpt from Strange As This Weather Has Been, page 10

APRIL 14, 2025

Strange As This Weather Has Been

 

Growing up here, you get the message very early on that your place is more backwards than anywhere in America and anybody worth much will get out soon as they can, and that doesn’t come only from outside. Still, despite all those shows and pictures and stories and voices, I never was able to see what lay ahead for me as something solid. I saw it instead as a color, a sweet peach-pink. A color I could walk into, with its own temperature, own smell, and by the time I was a teenager, that color, temperature, and smell had put such a spell on me I didn’t see much else.

Night After Night

 

an open field,

a slow-winged red-tailed

wheeling a headwind

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the far-off bleat

of piteous calves,

clicks of mystified crickets

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ice crackling a glass,

sweet tea

and a cross-back apron

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sister in her kitchen,

asking what more light

can a person shine

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into the brilliance

of an over-lit sky,

why even try

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skin

around her knuckles

taut

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my tattered bouquets 

of language 

limp, cloying

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she is gone, her body tendering

back to the soil

mine, a lone burdock starved for

groundwater

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