PSNY Virtual Workshop: Removing the Mask: Poetry as Confession

With poet Mya Matteo Alexice!

Confessional poetry skyrocketed to popularity in the 1950s and 60s with the emergence of writers like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, who paved the road for writers to excavate the deepest depths of their psyches. We'll discuss what confessional poetry looks like today, and how we can build upon that legacy to become *better* confessors. We'll learn how to take care of our truths and our selves as we write about tender and complicated realities. We'll do a lot of mindful questioning: what are we telling our poems, what are we keeping from them? What do we owe our readers or our communities? What is beyond the simple truth of ourselves? We will valiantly attempt, as M. L. Rosenthal writes, to create a speaker that is "unequivocally [them]self", even when that self is mistaken, remorseful, or despite it all, joyous.

About the Instructor: Mya Matteo Alexice is a Black and white graduate of the Rutgers-Newark MFA. A Cave Canem fellow and pseudo-librarian, they are the author of A Shape We’ve Yet to Name (Game Over Books), which was named one of the New York Public Library’s “Favorite Poetry Books of 2024 So Far”. His poems can be found in publications such as Pleiades, Black Warrior Review, Copper Nickel, diode, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Bennington Review, Barrelhouse, Honey Literary and elsewhere. They’ve received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, Fine Arts Work Center, and more. They were the runner-up in the 2023 Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest judged by Gary Soto. They enjoy video games where you can make the characters kiss.
* *This workshop will take place on Zoom.**

Host or Publisher The Poetry Society of New York