School of Our Lorde is an extension of the below-mentioned Summer of Our Lorde study series, that provides transformative community based learning based on unprecedented research into Audre Lorde’s approach to Poetics, Pedagogy, Politics and Publishing.
School of Our Lorde
School of Our Lorde: Poetics, Pedagogy, Politics and Publishing
The School of Our Lorde is comprised of 4 units of Thursday evening sessions that allow participants to deeply engage and build on the work of Audre Lorde as transmitted through the committed (obsessive) research of Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the poetics, teaching practices, political implications and publishing interventions of Audre Lorde’s work (and to enjoy delicious local desserts together) on Thursday evenings. Participants will also get coursepacks with some exclusive and unpublished materials on/by Lorde. Participants can choose to participate in one 3 week semester or the entire 4 month process. No one who completes an application and can attend will be turned away. Engaging, interactive poetic childcare will be provided at every session with amazing activities imagined with and implemented by Beth Bruch!!!!
February-
Poetics: Audre Lorde is best known as a warrior poet. In February, School of Our Lorde participants will get a change to deeply engage Lorde’s poetry (with the benefit of Lex’s archival research on her revisions) and write their own poetry. We will meet over dessert on Thursday February 4th, 11th and 18th (Audre’s b-day!!!!) and the poets will perform their own new or transformed work at a community reading on Saturday February 20th.
Apply for the poetics course here: School of Our Lorde Poetics Application (pdf version)
School of Our Lorde Poetics Application
email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)
March-
Pedagogy: Not everyone knows that Audre Lorde was breaking down the masters house by being a master teacher and librarian. Do you teach students armed and ready to text message? Well Audre Lorde taught John Jay College of Criminal Justice students who wore loaded guns to class as part of their uniform!!! Participants in this session will get to see Audre Lorde’s syllabi, and course evaluations, practice their own interpretations of her teaching methods and transform the meaning of education. Participants also get to help design and facilitate the Audre Lorde Survival School. We will meet over dessert on Thursday March 4, 11, and 18th.
Apply for the pedagogy course here:School of Our Lorde Pedagogy Application (pdf version)
School of Our Lorde Pedagogy Application (doc version)
email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)
April- (Note! In April we will meet on Wednesdays! 4/14 4/21 and 4/28)
Politics: With a strong emphasis on Lordeian Economics (that’s right!) this unit will allow participants to examine the creative power of difference in practice in community. Participants will learn about Lorde’s diasporic politics of solidarity, and her critical perspective on Black feminist socialist organizing in 1980’s. Participants will witness and process the impact of the Safe in Our Streets Durham events of April 16th created by SpiritHouse and the Durham Harm Free Zone and design action plans.
Apply for the politics course here: School of Our Lorde Politics Application (pdf version)
School of Our Lorde Politics Application (doc version)
email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)
May (Note! In May we will meet on Wednesdays 5/5, 5/12 and 5/19)
Publishing:
Audre Lorde also learned a lot from struggles with homophobia and gender oppression in the Black Arts Publishing movement and racism in the Feminist publishing movements. She was instrumental in creating Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and Winds of Change Press in St. Croix. This course will allow participants to learn from Audre Lorde’s lessons and to experiment with the contemporary modes of publication practiced by BrokenBeautiful Press, including anarchist self-publishing, podcasting, online pdf publishing, diy fashion and video blogging! We will meet on Thursday May 6th, 13th and 20th.
Apply for the School of Our Lorde Publishing Course here: School of Our Lorde Publishing Application (pdf version)
doc version: School of Our Lorde Publishing Application
email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)
Believe in intergenerational Black Feminist community education and want all sorts of great ancestral blessings and kisses? Donate dessert or name a sliding scale scholarship ($150-200 for a particular unit or $400-500 for the whole curriculum) after someone you love! Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to make it happen!
Summer of Lorde was a study program committed to love and transformation sponsored by…
BrokenBeautiful Press is based on the basic assumption that love, knowledge and inspiration are renewable resources for revolution that we produce together everyday. Use this site to make love as community, creativity, interaction, knowledge and growth. We are dedicated to the visibility of love as something that we are always making (and therefore which is neither scarce nor for sale). We invite you to acknowledge the ways that you are making love happen all of the time. Please check back often for tools to use in your community and email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to submit resources that you have developed and would like to share with the world.
SpiritHouse works each day in local neighborhoods throughout the Triangle and North Carolina. We bring hope, raise consciousness, and work with low-income families and children in need. Learn more about SpiritHouse and how you can get involved with our programs while making a positive change in the community.
SpiritHouse programs focus on education, the arts, health, and economic opportunities. By fighting illiteracy, racism, and poverty, we help needy families with projects that have an impact that’s measurable and lasting. Contact us at spirithousenc@gmail.com
and Southerners on New Ground (SONG)
SONG believes all our identities, issues and lives are connected across race, class, culture, gender and sexuality. SONG is a membership-based, Southern regional organization made up of working class, people of color, immigrants, and rural LGBTQ people. We vision a world where the triple shift factory worker and the drag queen at the bar down the block see their lives as connected and are working together for liberation.
Southerners On New Ground (SONG) was founded in order to advance Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer multi-racial, multi-issued education and organizing capable of combating the Right’s strategies of fragmentation and division.
SONG’s vision of a broad social and economic justice movement across the South, its mission to help build and strengthen that movement, and its strategy of multi-issue organizing remain as relevant, if not more relevant, today as when SONG was founded. SONG came out of conversations of Black and white southern lesbian leaders in 1993, each a long time activist on a broad range of issues, addressing deep concerns about the gains of the far right based on vicious divide and conquer tactics, particularly along fault lines of race, class and sexuality. They also expressed their hopes for helping build a broad social justice and civil rights movement where people and issues were connected and activists could bring their full selves to the organizing work.
SONG currently works to build, connect, and sustain those of us in the South who believe in liberation across all lines of race, class, culture, gender and sexuality, thru a 600 membership of primarily LGBT people. Our core work is around our Traveling Organizing School and campouts, retreats, and outreach that connect ‘the Kindred’ (those who share the dream of SONG) to each other.
