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The term ekphrasis<\/em> and its relationship with poetry is one which troubles me. The word finds its roots in Greek; ek <\/em>meaning \u2018out\u2019, and phrasis<\/em> \u2018speak\u2019. The general understanding of this concept being that the work of visual art is spoken out on to the page, dramatically translated into written form. Before mass communication made it possible for us to see a work of art without actually being in its presence physically, one function of ekphrasis was presumably to \u2018show\u2019 us works of art in lieu of a reproduction. In the Google-age the poet\u2019s engagement with the visual work of art must go beyond description. In House of the Deaf<\/em> man Andrea Porter and Tom de Freston employ an intriguing mode of ekphrasis, giving a voice to fourteen of Francisco Goya\u2019s paintings in a delightfully perverse act of ventriloquism.<\/p>\n Goya moved into Quinta del Sordo, the house of the deaf man, in 1819 and over a period of five years completed a series of works which would become known as the Black Paintings<\/em>. By this point not only was he completely deaf, but beginning to lose his sight as well. The conversation that occurs in House of the Deaf Man <\/em>then, is between three artists. The first cannot see, hear or speak for himself. He is instead spoken-out <\/em>by Porter in a series of poems which restage these private works (the Black Paintings were painted directly on to the walls of Goya\u2019s country house and never intended to be shown publicly) in contemporary Britain. One poem \u2018Pap\u2019, is dedicated to Rupert Murdoch and gives a voice to the two figures in Two Old Men Eating Soup<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n We like soup, it slips down easy,<\/p>\n saves us gumming away at stuff<\/p>\n that will never break down<\/p>\n to something we can swallow.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This gentle juxtaposition is typical of Porter\u2019s understated humour and gentle satire. Here we are moved beyond ekphrasis-simple to something very subtle indeed, the evocation of Murdoch\u2019s tabloid empire, the eroticism and violence of these publications juxtaposed with Goya\u2019s skilful and anguished application of these themes.<\/p>\n The third speaker in this conversation, de Freston, answers the questions raised in Porter\u2019s poems with further questions. In contrast to the epigram to \u2018Negative Space\u2019, a quote from Goya which states that for him there are \u2018only forms that are lit up and forms that are not\u2026 only light and shadow\u2019, de Freston\u2019s illustrations employ hard ruled lines and skewed geometries, making little use of shading and where he does this is achieved with cross-hatching. The majority of these responses are claustrophobic dioramas, the rooms of the House of the Deaf Man are exploded on one side so that we can see in.<\/p>\n One motif which occurs in several of these images is a body from the neck down descending a staircase, emphasising the voyeurism one must feel in the face of Goya\u2019s intimate paintings. We feel as though we are constantly walking in on something in Porter\u2019s poems too; the narrative perspective shifts from poem to poem which can be jarring. Continuity is instead provided by themes of sex, violence and domesticity. As such, we may surmise that the mode of ekphrasis employed is one in which several voices speak over the top of each other; each responding with their own stories, told in their own idiom. A mode which is coherent, but only just, manically, and on its own terms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n