Breaking the Silence: Writing Toward Healing and Resilience, Poetry Workshop with Mary Brancaccio and Ellen Goldsmith

This free poetry writing workshop is for adults of all writing levels and abilities who are interested in poetry as a tool for healing. Led by two published poets who have processed grief, illness and loss through writing poems, the session will introduce participants to useful strategies and poetic craft moves and will also consider common obstacles to writing about personal experiences. Poems by Mary Brancaccio, Ellen Goldsmith and others will serve as springboards for discussion and writing. The goal is to find material, develop ideas, images and/or metaphors and begin drafts of poems.

**THE WORKSHOP IS NOW FULL. You can still sign up to be on the waitlist, and you will be contacted if a spot opens up.** Please sign up HERE.

The workshop will be followed by a poetry reading and signing, “Digging In: Poetry on Life, Loss, and Renewal” at 3:00 PM. The reading will be open to all and does not require pre-registration.

Mary Brancaccio is the author of Fierce Geometry, published by Get Fresh Books Publishing.  Her poetry has appeared in Naugatuck River Review, Minerva Rising, and Edison Literary Review, Adana Literary Journal, among others. She has an MFA in Poetry and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Brancaccio’s poetry is also included in Writing the Land: Maine and Writing the Land: Northeast, as well as two international anthologies of poetry. Her website is ghostgirlpoet.com.

Ellen Goldsmith is the author of Left Foot, Right Foot, Where to Look, Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, winner of the 1997 Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest. Her poems have been published in numerous journals including The Healing Muse, Intima, Off the Coast and The Westchester Review as well as the anthologies Wait: Poems from the Pandemic and Enough: Poems of Resistance and Protest. Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York, she lives in Cushing, Maine.