2026 Workshop Series: July

Poetry of Mundanity
facilitated by Cynthia Chen
Monday, July 13, 2026
7-9pm EST
Zoom

REGISTRATION CLOSED

the workshop:

Poetry cultivates a terrain where nothing is ordinary or unimportant—from a piece of trash on the street to a fly on the windowsill to a shopper selecting a can of beans, mundanity has been a major inspiration and subject matter of poets across the globe. In this class, we will experiment with language in ways that dissect, deviate, and reproduce “meaning”. We will embark on a generative journey into new modes of discovery and reception. Through writing exercises and class discussions, we'll try out new techniques, develop strange imagery and syntax, and build mysterious worlds in our poems. We will cultivate both the tools and intuition to carve magic from the mundane, to transform the trivial into the wondrous, while walking through Sawako Nakayasu’s fervent attention to ants and Renee Gladman’s candid meditations that all start from “I began the day…”

the facilitator:

Cynthia Chen is a writer based in New York City, originally from Shanghai. She holds an MFA from New York University, where she taught “Introduction to Creative Writing” as an adjunct lecturer. She has also taught online creative writing classes through Accent Society—a writing community and artistic collective for diaspora writers working in English. Her debut chapbook Believing YoYo will be published by tiltedhouse press in spring 2026. She has received fellowships and support from the Community of Writers, Beijing Poetry Festival, and Accent Sisters.

Cynthia is dedicated to creating learning environments that nurture risks, experimentation, and open-mindedness. If you are someone who likes to break rules, dissolve boundaries, and embrace the wildness of language, this workshop will be a great fit for you!

Check out Cynthia’s poem, “Glitches,” in Issue 33: MIRROR!