Exploring the Ekphrastic Poetry of Hedy Habra

I love the work of Hedy Habra, a fabulous ekphrastic poet and painter. She is originally from Egypt and Lebanon and ended up where I grew up–in Kalamazoo, Michigan–, but I think of Hedy as a citizen of the world. She knows several languages perfectly, including but probably not limited to French, Spanish, English, and Arabic. You can find her bio at the end of this post.

Before I move into her poetry, I’d like to share a couple of her gorgeous paintings: “Dancing Egret” and “Woman & Leopard.”

Hedy and I were in the same MFA program at Western Michigan University, but we don’t think we were ever in the same classes. Part of that is because I didn’t strictly focus on poetry as my MFA coursework was divided between fiction and poetry. But the fun thing is that at the end of the program, we gave our final MFA reading together.

You couldn’t ask for a better example of ekphrastic poetry than Hedy’s new book, Or Did You Ever See the Other Side. It became apparent to me in reading this collection that Hedy and I have something else in common: an obsession with the art of Remedios Varo!

I was blessed to offer a blurb for the back of the book. Here is what I wrote:

In this extraordinary new collection, Hedy Habra weaves a marvelous life tapestry through dreams and the language of memory— “the right words thrown / pell-mell in the folds of memory.” These ekphrastic poems are not content to interpret painting and music but transcend the border between poet and art. Habra explores each piece from multiple angles to discover its locked heart: “See how colors arise from heartbeats.” Then she searches for a key, but there is never only one key. Each poem asks a question that invites the reader to see another perspective, then another. This collection is kaleidoscopic, stunning, and wrings a haunting beauty from every brushstroke and musical note. Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? “soars without wings,” taking the reader on a journey into its breathtaking dreamscape.

You can pick up a copy of the book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Did-You-Ever-Other-Side/dp/1950413691

I asked Hedy to write about her work for this blog post:

Trajectory and influences.

I have a passion for art and I’m a visual artist, so art has always been an inherent part of my writing whether it is criticism, fiction, or poetry. I love prose poems but enjoy experimenting with forms, such as haikus, anaphoric poems, abecedarians, found sonnets, haibuns, pantoums, and most recently ghazals. The restrictions of a form call for concision and enable me to discard redundancies when I struggle with drafts.

The stories in Flying Carpets and the poems in Tea in Heliopolis and The Taste of the Earth, focus on my countries of origin, Egypt and Lebanon, weaving linguistic, historical, and mythical components with personal memories. I have also lived in Greece and Belgium and developed a sense of belonging encompassing cultural influences.

Even my ‘memoirs in verse’ are instilled with art. My mother was an artist and I grew up surrounded by her artworks. As a child, I imagined stories about the characters in her paintings and lived vicariously within this alternate world. Oftentimes, some elements from a painting would trigger deep emotions and revive memories or lead me to recreate imaginary worlds. For the past fifteen years, I studied Chinese Ink brush painting on rice paper, which enabled me to paint the covers of my poetry collections.

My first ekphrastic poetry collection, Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015) was inspired by artists of different genders, styles, and periods, whereas my most recent ekphrastic collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023) is mainly inspired by contemporary and surrealist women artists. Spanish-Mexican surrealist, Remedios Varo is a primary influence, but I draw inspiration from other surrealists, such as Juanita Guccione, Leonor Fini, Deborah Tanning, and Leonora Carrington. I love surrealism because of its connection with the world of dreams and the unconscious.

When I write ekphrastic poetry, I don’t aim at depicting a work of art, but rather my response to it. I love to engage in a dialogue with the artwork itself, with one of the characters in the paintings, or at times with the artist. Often verbal images provide a sequel to the scene portrayed or another version of the original, adding a new dynamic life to the artwork. Even when verbal images coincide synchronously with the artwork, words stand on their own, creating a new world. As a result, after having written or read an ekphrastic poem, we can’t look back at the source of inspiration in the same way because the artwork will retain traces of the verbal images projected onto it in an inter-artistic dialogue.

 Here are two poems from Or Did You Ever See the Other Side?

Or Can’t You See How We’re Weaving Ourselves Tight?

After Three Women and Three Owls by Juanita Guccione

                                   

Didn’t you think you’d soar high up when you wore a miniskirt?

I lowered my hemline, surrendering to ghost owls’ hoots

Following the rhythm of my elder’s everlasting refrains

When she visited the Louvre she wanted to wear her skin bare

 

I lowered my hemline, surrendering to ghost owls’ hoots

Wore a key chain around my wrist that didn’t open any doors

When she visited the Louvre she wanted to wear her skin bare

Chest open to the drifts of wind as she’d march with Delacroix’s banner

 

Wore a key chain around my wrist that didn’t open any doors

Afraid to face the black sun of Melancholy sung by Gerard de Nerval

Chest open to the drifts of wind as she’d march with Delacroix’s banner

She enters the triple dance, a sarong loosely wrapped around her hips

 

Afraid to face the black sun of Melancholy sung by Gerard de Nerval

I conjure my younger self’s steps eager to unlock the darkness

She enters the triple dance, a sarong loosely wrapped around her hips

The three of us dive into the emerald waters under the blackened sun

 

I conjure my younger self’s steps eager to unlock the darkness

You didn’t soar high up still unable to satisfy your hunger

The three of us dive into the emerald waters under the blackened sun

United at last in our quest for meaning, weaving ourselves tight

 

First published by SLANT

From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)

The inspiring art for this poem:

 

 

Note for the following poem: WordPress does not allow the longer lines to be all on one line, but the idea is each line gets longer than the one before.

Or How Do You Keep Track of All the Keys You Once Owned?

After Chiharu Shiota’s The Locked Room

 

keys to unlock one’s buried memories

keys to the family cottage you had to sell

keys that once opened different-sized locks

keys that had to be changed after an effraction

keys that yearn for the doors they used to open

keys thrown into a deep well, still oozing blood

keys to the palaces King Farouk owned in Egypt

keys to learning how to deal with oneself and others

keys to the meaning of feelings that you kept losing

keys to the safes holding papers that ruled your lives

keys kept in a jewelry box that must have mattered once

keys, lost, forgotten or treasured as a possible come back

keys to the wrought-iron patio gate half-covered with jasmine

keys that opened the car door that led you straight to the beach

keys to dream’s horned and ivory gates that keep getting mixed up

keys meant to reach the heart of a man before he’d change the locks

keys you hold in your palm and run your fingers over and over again

keys to an old friend’s house who once relied upon you to water her plants

keys passed on from generation to generation to reclaim the ancestral home

keys that you had to return to the hotel where you wished you’d spend a lifetime

keys to all the cars you’ve ever owned and led you through long-forgotten crossroads

keys to the office you left carrying a cardboard box filled with what seemed important

keys to the wooden-carved secretary your mother handed down to you that held no secret to her

keys to the homes you kept leaving, from country to country, from one neighborhood to the next

 

First published by MockingHeart Review

From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)

This is the inspiring art:

Bio

Hedy Habra’s fourth poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023), won the 2024 International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award; The Taste of the Earth won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention. Her book of criticism, Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa, focuses on the visual aspects of the Peruvian Nobel Laureate’s narrative. She holds a BS in Pharmacy from the French St Joseph University. Habra earned an MA in English, an MFA, and an MA and PhD in Spanish from Western Michigan University where she taught for over three decades. She is a twenty-two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/