On Thursday 26th March, Year 12 and 13 English and Classic students and staff made the short trip across London Road to visit Kingston Grammar School for a collaborative seminar on ekphrasis – a poetic form in which language is used to respond to or describe a work of art.
Mr. Nolan from KGS spoke about the Shield of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, before Ms. Boland from Tiffin explored the Shield of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid, followed by Ms. Sayles from KGS who discussed ekphrasis in works by Moschus, Catullus, Ovid and Achilles Tatius. Dr. Byers from Tiffin then introduced students to Ciarán O’Rourke’s poem ‘Crucifixion’, which responds to Matthias Grünewald’s painting of this famous scene, before Dr. Kandemir from KGS brought things to a close with her discussion of Roger Robinson’s poetic reimagining of Bartholomew Dandridge’s painting ‘A Young Girl with a Dog and a Page’.
This was a valuable opportunity for students to consider texts and themes not included in their curricula and will hopefully be followed by further interdisciplinary and interschool events.