Braided Lines: Exploring the Intersections of Poetry and Photographic Practice

What happens when poetry and photography start speaking to each other instead of standing apart? In this new concept-driven online workshop, we explore how language and image can become a braided practice, each shaping, responding to, and pushing the other.

Led by artist and educator Cali M. Banks, together we move through a full cycle of photographic practice, conceptualizing, photographing, editing, and sequencing a small body of work while working alongside poetic prompts, texts, and your own writing. Rather than treating words and images as separate forms, we use both as active tools, letting each shape how you see and build the other. Lines of verse begin to suggest composition, while light, texture, and framing feed back into writing.

Over four group sessions, we engage with ideas around materiality, perception, and the structure of language, considering how words and images function as physical and conceptual systems. We explore how meaning changes when text and photograph are placed in direct relationship, and how intention, chance, and interpretation shape the work that emerges.

Through weekly demonstrations, guided exercises, and ongoing exploration, poetry and photography remain in constant dialogue. We also work with sequencing, layering, and different presentation forms, allowing your work to evolve across both written and visual formats.

Each session includes group image and text review, with discussion focused on process, decision-making, and how the relationship between writing and image develops over time. By the end of the workshop, poetry and photography feel less like separate elements and more like interwoven parts of a shared practice.