Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir is an African-American poet and author of three full-length collections of poetry. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Bashir’s most recent book of poetry, Field Theories, wends its way through quantum mechanics, chicken wings and Newports, love and a shoulder’s chill, melding blackbody theory (idealized perfect absorption, as opposed to the whitebody’s idealized reflection) with real live Black bodies in poems that span lyric, narrative, dramatic, and multi-media experience, engaging their containers while pushing against their constraints.

“Samiya Bashir challenges the vocabulary of science, finding inflections and echoes within that vocabulary of the long and brutal history of race and racially based economic exploitation in the U.S.A. dynamic, shape-shifting machine of perpetual motion,” wrote Marcella Durand for Hyperallergic.

Albert Murray said, “the second law of thermodynamics ain’t nothing but the blues.” Field Theories asks what is the blue of how we treat each other, ourselves, of what this world does to us, of what we do to this shared world in poems which “creat[ing] cognitive openings,” wrote Durand, “for understanding how science, history, life and poetry intersect.”

During the six months leading up to the release of Field Theories, Bashir created six short video poems in collaboration with video artist Roland Dahwen Wu (Patua Films) and dancer Keyon Gaskin (Physical Education) to remix and reimagine the work through a new medium: sound + image + light.

Norse gods, Ghanaian call and response, and black gospel all contribute to an exploration of the sensual world in Gospel, her second collection which, along with Where the Apple Falls was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Blackademics reviewer Alexis Pauline Gumbs described the collection as a “close look at the infinite places and moments when the human body meets despair, pleasure and transcendence.” Bashir is also editor of Best Black Women’s Erotica II, and co-editor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana.

Bashir holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, where she served as Poet Laureate, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she received two Hopwood Poetry Awards. In October 2017 she was awarded the Regional Arts & Culture Council’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature in recognition of individual artistic achievement and excellence to sustain and enhance her creative process. She has been the recipient of numerous other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies, and is a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writer’s festival for LGBT writers of African descent.

She has collaborated with a number of visual and media artists on projects such as M A P S :: a cartography in progress, with Roland Dahwen Wu, Coronagraphy with Tracy Schlapp, and Bashir has collaborated on a number of multimedia poetry and art projects including M A P S :: a cartography in progress, and Silt, Soot, and Smut, with Alison Saar, both of which travel the country in exhibition and performance. Bashir has most recently collaborated with Saar and Schlapp on Hades D.W.P., a forthcoming limited edition artists’ book.

Formerly a long-time communications professional focused on editorial, arts, and social justice movement building, Bashir now lives in Portland, Oregon, with a magic cat who shares her love of trees and blackbirds, and who occasionally crashes her classes and poetry salons at Reed College.

Life and career

Bashir is the daughter of an African-American mother and a first generation immigrant from Somalia.^[1] She is the author of Field Theories (Nightboat Books, 2017), as well Gospel (2009) and Where the Apple Falls (2005), which were both Lambda Literary Award finalists. She is also the author of the chapbooks Wearing Shorts on the First Day of Spring (1999), American Visa (2001), and Teasing Crow (2006).

Bashir is a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writers festival for LGBT writers of African descent,^[2] and is an alumni fellow of Cave Canem. She has served as Writer in Residence at Soul Mountain Retreat,^[3] as James Cody Scholar for the James Dick Foundation for the Arts, and as Artist in Residence with The Austin Project. She has served as the contributing editor of Black Issues Book Review and Curve Magazine and the book editor of Ms. Magazine. In addition, Bashir has served on the National Black Justice Coalition's board of directors.^[4]

Recognition

Bashir's poetry, stories, articles, essays and editorial work have been featured in Poetry, Drunken Boat, World Literature Today, Ecotone, HOAX, The Normal School, Poet Lore, Callaloo, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Other Countries: Voices Rising, Reverie, Carry the Word,^[5] Essence Magazine, Obsidian III, CaKe #3, Cave Canem #7, Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, Contemporary American Women Poets, Best Lesbian Erotica 03, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Ms. Magazine, Black Issues Book Review, Curve, Vibe, Seventeen, XXL, Lambda Book Report, and The American Journal of Public Health, and The Encyclopedia Project. Her poems have appeared in anthologies, including War Diaries (2010), Best Lesbian Erotica 03 (Cleis Press, 2002), Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (Cleis Press, 2000), and the Cave Canem Anthology: VII (2002).^[6]

Awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies include the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the NEA, the University of California (where she served as a poet laureate), the Astraea Foundation, the National League of American Pen Women, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Soul Mountain Retreat, The Austin Project, Alma de Mujer, the Lesbian Poetry Award from the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice,^[7] and the James Dick Foundation for the Performing Arts, among others. She was a recipient of the 2011 Aquarius Press Legacy Award, given annually in recognition of women writers of color who actively provide creative opportunities for other writers.^[8]

Bibliography

• Medina, Tony., Bashir, Samiya A, and Lansana, Quraysh Ali. Role Call : A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Art & Literature. Chicago: Third World, 2002.
• Best Black Women's Erotica 2. 1st ed. San Francisco, Calif. : [Berkeley, Calif.]: Cleis ; Distributed by Group West, 2002.
• Where the Apple Falls : Poems. Washington, D.C.: RedBone, 2005.
• Gospel : Poems. Washington, DC: RedBone, 2009.
• Field Theories. New York: Nightboat, 2017.

In anthology

• Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. University of Georgia Press, 2018.

References

External links

• Interview with Samiya Bashir by Steven G. Fullwood, Vintage Entity Press
• Samiya Bashir's poetry in Torch
• Author's Website
• The Rumpus review of Gospel
• Poetry Foundation Page