Poetic License, presented by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild and the Upstate Artists Guild, is a collaborative project connecting poets and visual artists in New York’s Capital Region.
Each year poets submit image-driven poems that are shared with artists. Artists create new artwork inspired by the poems they choose.
Traditionally, ekphrastic art involves poets responding to visual artwork. In Poetic License, we turn that idea around: visual artists respond to poetry, creating new works inspired by the images, stories, and sensory worlds found within poems.
Follow the path from putting pen to paper all the way to hanging the art on the gallery wall.
Poets submit image-driven work that becomes the foundation for the project.
Artists select poems and create original artwork in response.
Poems and artwork are exhibited together in a public gallery show.
Every artwork begins with a poem.
We are seeking image-driven poems that invite the reader to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel the world of the poem.
Submit up to two poems that spark vivid imagery and invite visual interpretation.
Deadline: May 31, 2026
See how poets and artists have collaborated since the beginning of Poetic License in 2022.
The very first Poetic License featuring 18 pieces of art at the Arts Associates Gallery & Lark Hall in Albany.
In 2023, the show exhibited 31 pieces of artwork at the Fish Market Project & the Honest Weight Food Co-op.
In 2024, 43 works of art by 26 artists, inspired by 24 poets’ poems, were exhibited at the Honest Weight Food Co-op.
In 2025, 22 poems inspired 30 pieces of visual art hung on the walls of the Fish Market & the Honest Weight Food Co-op.
The Upstate Artists Guild and Hudson Valley Writers Guild are proud to present Poetic License 2026, a project bridging the worlds of poetry and visual art in the Capital Region.