A woman who started writing poetry as a teenager will show others how they can use the art form to deal with emotions at a workshop this week.

Patricka Ferguson said that people who had never written poems before could find that the experience was not what they expected.

The Poetic Approach to Healing Workshop, hosted by the Women’s Resource Centre, will run from 6pm on Thursday.

Ms Ferguson said: “It’s something I’ve been doing myself since I was 15 years old to deal with whatever may be emotionally coming out that I found difficult to vocalise and express. I used my poetry for that.”

She added: “It’s definitely a coping mechanism for dealing with different things that you go through in life, whether they be happy or sad, bad or good.

“A lot of people journal and they go ahead and figure things out in their life. Poetry can help with that as well.”

Ms Ferguson said that she has used meditation and poetry to help people but this will be her first workshop.

Although it will be designed for “any and everybody”, she added that people who need a “coping outlet” would find it particularly useful.

Ms Ferguson explained: “It was me at 15 thinking you had to know how to rhyme – poetry is not that constrictive.

“It’s an open and carefree medium, you can make it anything that you want it to be.

“Even if you try for the first time, you will find out this is way different from what you expected.”

She will share some of her own poems at the workshop, which costs $25, at the WRC office in Sofia House on Church Street.

Ms Ferguson will then guide people through activities to help them open up before they put pen to paper themselves.

* For more information or to register, e-mail wrc@wrcbermuda.com or call 295-3882.