Ekphrastic Poetry: Does Art Imitate Life, or Does Life Imitate Art? with Pat Mottola on August 6, 2025
Famous Works of Art: How they speak to you, how you speak back to them. In ekphrastic poetry – poetry that is inspired by a work of art – the writer has a relationship with the work of art.
Poets writing about art create a story beyond what the eye can see. Ekphrastic poetry expresses something unique about the original piece of art. Writers of ekphrastic poetry create the unseen from the seen. Ekphrastic poetry allows us to think outside the box, approach artworks in different lights, and compose ourselves anew. Thoughts and feelings are enhanced by the collaboration of visual works of art and poetic expression.
$30 gets you 90 minutes of instruction in the Workshop Gallery at Ball & Socket Arts on August 6th from 7 to 8:30 pm. If cost is a barrier to participation, please reach out to our team to discuss accommodations.
Workshop is limited to 12 participants, so be sure to register now!
Award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee, Pat Mottola teaches Creative Writing at Southern Connecticut State University, where she earned both an M.S. in Art Education and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. In addition to working with students at SCSU, she is thrilled to teach both art and poetry to Senior Citizens in person and online throughout Connecticut. Her work is published in journals across the country, including War, Literature & the Arts, Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, San Pedro River Review, VietNow Magazine, and Paterson Literary Review. She has served as Keynote Speaker for the MPAC-Young Writers Awards as well as judged Connecticut High School Poetry Out Loud competitions. Pat is President of the Connecticut Poetry Society and served as editor of Connecticut River Review from 2012–2017. On a global scale, she mentors Afghan women writers living in Afghanistan and beyond, resulting in a collection of poems in English, Maybe I Should Fly, by two Afghan sisters who lived under the Taliban regime. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Under the Red Dress, After Hours, and A Town Like That. Pat was the recipient of the prestigious CSCU system-wide Board of Regents Outstanding Teacher Award in 2019, as well as the J. Philip Smith Outstanding Teacher Award in 2021. Pat is the Poet Laureate of Cheshire, CT.