SNS | 5-30-26
Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic readings
Featuring:
Julie Martin
Cristina Adams
Theme: Ekphrastic Garden
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, May 30, 2026
8:00pm Central time
Online Event
Free Admission
Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List
The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX
Scroll down for monthly writing prompt
Join Event on Zoom
Meeting ID: 879 8156 9214
Passcode: 615185
Author Bios
Born on a fault line in Anchorage, Alaska and raised at the foot of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Julie Martin developed a deep connection to the natural world. She now lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. Her poems, rooted in place, invite readers to discover all that is hidden in plain sight. Her work has been widely published in literary journals, and she frequently joins other poets in giving readings in Minnesota and beyond. Her debut collection, Homespun Alchemy, a meditation on home, land, and the everyday sacred, is forthcoming, Spring 2026. Learn more: juliemartinpoet.com
Buy Homespun Alchemy: https://finishinglinepress.com/product/homespun-alchemy-by-julie-martin/
Cristina Adams is a Cuban American poet and author of Copycat: A fabulous (and slightly naughty) memoir of a life in fashion (Atmosphere Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Quartet Journal, The Broken Teacup, Dickinson Review, Buffalo Press, Ark, Minetta Review, and other publications. She ghostwrites nonfiction/memoir, reads poetry for Epiphany Journal, and is currently working on her first full-length collection of poems, which explore cultural memory, family history, identity and the search for belonging. She has an MA in creative writing-poetry from New York University and lives in Austin with her husband and Luna the dog.
Buy Copycat: https://atmospherepress.com/books/copycat-by-victor-costa-and-cristina-adams/
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, May 23, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
May Writing Prompt: Ekphrastic Garden
Ekphrasis is writing that responds to a work of art—a painting, sculpture, photograph, dance, or film. A way of looking closely, then answering in language.
A garden can be part of that conversation. It’s a kind of living artwork—shaped by care, time, weather, flora, fauna, wildness. The occasional bird bath or garden gnome.
This month, you have a few ways in: write an ekphrastic piece inspired by a garden (real or represented in art), write an ekphrasis about any subject (no garden required), or move more loosely and simply write toward nature—its textures, colors, endangerment, its living cycles of change.
Follow what draws your attention. Let the piece be a response—something seen, remembered, or still growing in the mind.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:
Choose a specific artwork (painting, photograph, sculpture, etc.) that includes a garden or natural element. Write to it, from it, or against it.
Visit a garden—public, private, remembered, imagined. Treat it as the artwork. What does it ask of you? What do you notice first, and what takes time?
Write from the perspective of something in the garden: soil, root, fence, weed, irrigation line, bee, rot. Let it speak.
Focus on human intervention: pruning, planting, neglect, control. Where does care end and domination begin?
Let the poem move between two spaces: the artwork and your own life. Where do they overlap, contradict, or echo each other?
Misread the “source” on purpose. Invent what isn’t there. Let the poem be wrong in a generative way.
Write about a garden that no longer exists, or one that hasn’t been made yet.
Use the structure of another form (letter, field notes, inventory, instructions, prayer, caption, museum placard).
Start with close observation—color, texture, sound—then let the poem widen into thought, memory, or question.
If you’re not drawn to ekphrasis, write a garden or nature piece that pays attention to growth, cycles, seasonality, or the tension between wild and tended.
As ever, the theme is optional — an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.
INSPIRATION
In a Garden of Small Dreams: Art + Poetry in Conversation By poet Tricia Bogle and artist Shu Tu
Roses By Barbara Guest
In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden By Matthea Harvey
Calling Things What They Are By Ada Limón
Ekphrasis With Toothing Chainsaw in Unnamed Halhul Vineyard By George Abraham
Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of Saint Sebastian By torrin a. greathouse
Summer Haibun By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Hello, the Roses By Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Only a Shadow By Carmen Giménez
nail hard By Samiya Bashir
Bonus
Rattle Archive of monthly Ekphrastic Challenge Winners
My Garden (Book) By Jamaica Kincaid