Workshop

What Does a Poem Do to You? Workshop for CUNY Students and Faculty

Tue, Aug 26, 2025

11:30 AM–12:45 PM

English Lounge, Room 4406, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC. Free and open to all CUNY students and faculty. Registration required.

Audre Lorde captures her self reflection in the mirror, camera in hand.

Join us for a free generative workshop “What Does a Poem Do to You?” led by visiting scholar Caleb Ward from the University of Hamburg in Germany and author of The Unflinching Philosophy of Audre Lorde (2026), and moderated by Ju Ly Ban, a Lost & Found Archival Research Fellow and PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Using recordings of Audre Lorde’s 1984 Berlin poetry seminars, we will explore Lorde’s account of how a poem reaches out across feeling: what it does for the poet, what it demands of the reader, and how it can transform reality by creating what Lorde describes as “the shape and taste and philosophy of what we wish to see.” This free workshop is open to all CUNY students and faculty.

About the Workshop Guide & Moderator

Workshop Guide: Caleb Ward is a postdoc in Philosophy at University of Hamburg in Germany. His book The Unflinching Philosophy of Audre Lorde is forthcoming in 2026.

Moderator: Ju Ly Ban is a doctoral candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and an Archival Research Fellow with Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Her research focuses on the archives of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in conversation with Black queer feminist practice.

Caleb Ward

Ju Ly Ban

Lost & Found Archival Research Fellow

This event is organized by Ju Ly Ban as part of the CUNY Graduate English Program Friday Forum series, co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center.