Ebony Bloodletting : A Confessional Poetry Workshop April 4, 2015

Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? We will be transforming pain into poetry. Before Mahony delves into her work, she will share her story, her life experiences concerning her struggles with and recovery from heroin addiction and mental illness. These topics are the themes of her expository poems. At this workshop, Mahony will share poems from her newly released chapbook of confessional poetry ",Prior Restraints." She will discuss confessional poets who inspire her such as; Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. 

The audience will be invited to participate in writing exercises that will display the healing effects of an emotional purging, via ink and paper. The participants will be writing two separate poems on the same life experience, from different points-of-view. After a brief discussion they will be invited to share them. Mahony will touch on her proposal to bring the art of creative writing into correction facilities and explain how the act of writing from her own truth was instrumental in saving her life. She is dedicated to seeing to it that the arming of others with this therapeutic tool become a reality in the near future.