Samiya Bashir's Blog, page 7
October 29, 2011
2011 Book #113: GOSPEL by Samiya Bashir - Blog - Matt Bell
2011 Book #113: GOSPEL by Samiya Bashir - Blog - Matt Bell
2011 BOOK #113: GOSPEL BY SAMIYA BASHIR
...the silence that surrounds each carcass now: voided prayer: cold—from "When the saints went" by Samiya Bashir, collected in Gospel
arthritic grating: remembered notions of breath. saints: offer a hand to a
wheezing shadow: wish for someone to hold before the sure, sudden twilight.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
2011 Book #113: GOSPEL by Samiya�Bashar - Blog - Matt Bell
2011 Book #113: GOSPEL by Samiya�Bashar - Blog - Matt Bell
2011 BOOK #113: GOSPEL BY SAMIYA BASHAR
...the silence that surrounds each carcass now: voided prayer: cold—from "When the saints went" by Samiya Bashir, collected in Gospel
arthritic grating: remembered notions of breath. saints: offer a hand to a
wheezing shadow: wish for someone to hold before the sure, sudden twilight.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
October 27, 2011
Hey! It's my birthday! And I got an award!
Legacy Award Winners Announced Today and Other Updates
AQUARIUS PRESS
LEGACY AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED TODAY
Samiya BashirAquarius Press/Willow Books is proud to announce that the 2011 Aquarius Press Legacy Award will be presented toSamiya Bashirand Parneshia Jones as co-winners. Both women received multiple nominations extolling their vast contributions to our field. We were extremely impressed with the caliber of all the nominees, and many thanks go out to those who submitted nominations.
[image error] Parneshia JonesThe Legacy Award honors a woman writer of color from the American Midwest actively involved in providing opportunities for other writers. The award recognizes the anniversary of the founding of Aquarius Press and the ongoing mission of its founder, Heather Buchanan. The 2011 prize consists of a tribute section in the 2012 edition of the acclaimed journal Reverie: Midwest African American Literature and a feature at the 2012 Willow Books Celebration during AWP in Chicago, IL.
About Samiya Bashir
Ann Arbor, Michigan native Samiya Bashir's work includes Gospel, Where the Apple Falls, and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Bashir's poetry, stories, articles and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications and she is the recipient of awards, grants, and fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, the University of Michigan, the University of California, Soul Mountain Writers Colony, The Austin Project, Alma de Mujer, the James Dick Foundation for the Performing Arts, the Astraea Foundation, the National Association of Pen Women, and Cave Canem, among others. For over a decade, Bashir worked as a social justice communications professional and was owner and principal consultant of Lead Time Consulting, specializing in communications for non-profits and arts organizations. Currently, she is back home among the Ann Arbor trees, teaching writing at the University of Michigan.
To read an earlier feature interview with Samiya by Aquarius Press, visit www.WillowLit.com .
About Parneshia Jones
Parneshia Jones is a member of the Affrilachian Poets. Her awards include the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award and the Margaret Walker Short Story Award. She has been published in several anthologies includingThe Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and America! What's My Name? Her work at the Chicago-based TriQuarterly/NU Press includes securing a home for the Cave Canem Second Book Prize, publishing the new collection of poems by Nikky Finney and helping to ensure that there was a proper celebration of the recent anniversary of Chicago playwright Lorraine Hansberry's Broadway debut of A Raisin in the Sun. Ms. Jones has an MFA from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.
Details for the 2012 Willow Books reading in Chicago during AWP (Feb. 29-March 3, 2012) are forthcoming, but plan on a blockbuster event--watch our Willow Books Facebook page for announcements.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.comwww.samiyabashir.com
October 6, 2011
Shuttlesworth vs. Jobs? Seriously? Let's keep it together people. ("us" vs. "them" = everybody loses)
What SHUTTLESWORTH & JOBS had in common: Vision. Action. Populist roots (also: colored daddies).
Faith in their cause. Faith their work.
...and a bad-ass way with a sledgehammer.
Lemme say this just one good time:
I refuse (refuse) to get into a pissing contest (w/ Facebook no less, nor the blogosphere, nor my friends thereon) about who's more important: The Black Preacher or The "White" Capitalist.
(And yes, I keep dropping the Syrian bomb not because Jobs' adoptive parents weren't his parents, but because I *will not* be complicit in the erasure of white supremacy--no one sees all the technological (& other) visionaries being wiped out as we continue to murder Arabs left and right like they aren't real people. This, to me, this is another kind of ethnic cleansing--if we can pass them off as white-white, let's do it so it doesn't complicate our illusion of intellectual superiority.)
Is there a difference between Civil Rights and the Right Not to be Blocked Out of Our Increasingly Technological Culture? Yep. (Especially as, like most of us who are non-white, and non-rich, access to technological education remains scarce and expensive, and/or as some of us are freakin' poets and wouldn't spend our lives writing code even if we could.)
Is there a difference between Liberal Christianity and Liberal Capitalism?
Yep. (And quiet as it's kept, they're both as full holes as a tether-ball.)
But, rather than embrace a hierarchical approach where one is good and one is bad, where one died and it's sad, and the other died and it's angering because he has "stolen the thunder" of the other's death I'd rather take the opportunity to find connection, rather than division.
If nothing else, I think they would both appreciate us using the occasion to bring each other together rather than push each other apart.
As someone who is neither Pro-Capitalism nor Pro-Christianity, I can still see the importance of their not-all-that-dissimilar visions. The idea that all children should have access to an equal (and excellent) public education, a well-lived life, and the idea that anyone (esp 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago) can and should be able to maneuver themselves in our increasingly divided technological world (despite, perhaps, having unequal educations, and/or techy inclinations) is *differently* visionary. I do not, however, see them (again, in their purest forms, and we rarely get to live in our purest forms) as in opposition with each other. In fact, I see more connections than divisions between the two.
People also thought I was crazy the day that both Jim Henson & Sammy Davis, Jr. died (May 16, 1990).
Why should I care about Jim Henson--who? The puppeteer?
And, to the same note, why should I care about Sammy Davis, Jr.?
Wasn't he an Uncle Tom anyway?
This is what they said.
What I said 20 years ago, and stand by today, was this: I can't imagine how I could have grown up even remotely sane in the whitewashed world of my childhood without the Muppets. Period. Thank god for Kermit, and Fozzy, for all those crazy creatures in whom I could see myself as in NO ONE ELSE ON TELEVISION (black, white, or brown--wasn't nobody on T.V. living like me). I know white folks who weren't allowed to watch Sesame Street growing up because it was "too colored," their parents didn't want their kids brainwashed by that ghetto trash madness. Me? That wasn't my life either, but I got it. I at least had a path of entry into a world peopled by folks who were … different. That "fucking white-ass" puppeteer saved my life. Period.
Are they both flawed? Yep.
Were some of their methods … shall we say … not my own? Yep.
And yes, it sucks that they died on the same day. For their myriad loved ones, it sucks that they died at all. But I'd like to use that fact to highlight the similarities of the fight against the machine they inspired in many (not all, for sure, but many) like me.
Am I alone in this? I don't think so.
But, hell. I dunno. Ask Facebook.
(drops the mic and exists the stage)
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.comwww.samiyabashir.com
September 27, 2011
His Name Be Witness: The Genius of Marvin K. White — Lambda Literary
His two (yep, two) new books are recently out from RedBone Press.
Need to know more so you don't sleep on the magic? Here ya go:
His Name Be Witness: The Genius of Marvin K. White
by STEVEN G. FULLWOOD on SEPTEMBER 25, 2011
The good news, girl is that you eat the heart first so you will
not love what you have to do next—divide up the brains. Do the
unthinkable. Swallowing pride is only practice for chewing on the
gristle of memory. Nothing tastes like it used to. And
fortunately the more you eat the less used to there is. Eat
the ears. The cartilage and bone, bending and snapping amongst
your teeth, the vibration of the tuning fork, pricking and picking up
the worst of what you will say to yourself to make it go down, the
worst of what will be said about you. Sopping up the juices with
the cochlear nerve is unnerving. There is no worst now. Lean in
and chew off the nose. The sinus offers us no signs. You can't
know what the rest will smell or taste like until you taste it. You
can't eat just any old body. One eye at a time. Kiss. Lick and bite
the lips. Keep your promise that they are exactly what you have a
taste for. Pray over this eucharist love. Leave nothing to chance or
waste.
Marvin K. White, from our name be witness
We are living in the age of Marvin K. White. Such pronouncements sound lofty when issued by anyone, particularly when he and I are running buddies dashing down our singular and collective paths to publication.But trust me, when you read this man's work you'll close your eyes and nod appreciatively to the gospel. He didn't blink. Marvin's works are significant contributions to American letters. His poetic insights are necessary places to lay your hat and rest your feet. For those seeking literature that pushes, pouts, praises and plays with language in soothing ways, you'll find a very generous poet in Marvin. His seductive verse gently reminds us of our duty to be gracious, kind and vulnerable with each other.
Born in Oakland, California to Curley Joseph and Margaret White, Marvin was raised by a faithful mother and grandmother named Bessie. The baby of the family grew to be a skinny, delightful teenager whose eyes caught a lot of stories. Early on Marvin began to chronicle his life with words and not too few cakes. But I am getting ahead of myself.[1]
That one. Standing there on the verge of tears. That one. The one that stand out. That's mine. Outstanding.[2]
Being a friend of Marvin's, a brother in the word, the work and the way I've read drafts of his writings for years. I've had the honor of publishing him twice (Think Again[3] and To Be Left With the Body[4]) so I claim no impartiality, but this is not a traditional critique. Call it a public love letter to and about a brother who creates beautiful art deserving of praise. In light of his new publications, http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
September 26, 2011
This Weekend: Red Rover Series / Experiment #51
Red Rover Series / Experiment #51
Red Rover Series{readings that play with reading}
Experiment #51:
X-Ref = Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1st
5pm / doors lock 5:30pm
**please note change from usual time**
Featuring:
Samiya Bashir
Tisa Bryant
Gabrielle Civil
Carina Gia Ferro
Krista Franklin
John Keene
at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4
logistics --
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA PROJECT was founded in 2006, and is edited and published by Tisa Bryant, Miranda Mellis and Kate Schatz. The Encyclopedia Project is a hybrid publication that plays with the reference book, literary journal and arts catalogue, blending all into a hybrid series of cross-referenced hardcover volumes. Each book complicates categorical, genre and narrative expectations, while connecting seemingly disparate writers, artists and ideas within and among volumes. Encyclopedia Vol. 1 A-E was published to wide acclaim in 2006; Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K just launched new excitement in 2010. http://www.encyclopediaproject.org
SAMIYA BASHIR is the author of Gospel, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2009 Lambda Literary Award, and Where the Apple Falls, a Poetry Foundation bestseller and finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. Bashir is editor of Black Women's Erotica 2 and co-editor, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana, of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Bashir's poetry, stories, articles and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications and granted several awards. For over a decade, Bashir worked as a social justice communications professional and was a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writer's festival for LGBT writers of African descent. Most recently, she was owner and principal consultant of Lead Time Consulting, specializing in communications for non-profits and arts organizations. She currently lives amidst the Ann Arbor trees beneath which she teaches writing at the University of Michigan.
TISA BRYANT is the author of Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), a collection of hybrid essays on myth-making and black presences in film, literature and visual art. She is co-editor/founder of The Encyclopedia Project, and co-editor (with Ernest Hardy) of War Diaries, an anthology on black gay men's desire and survival, published in 2010 by AIDS Project Los Angeles, and nominated for a LAMBDA Literary Award. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in the journals 1913, Animal Shelter, Mandorla, Mixed Blood, Viz., in the 'zine, Universal Remote: Meditations on the Absence of Michael Jackson, and the solo exhibits of visual artists Jaime Cortez, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and filmmaker Cauleen Smith. A novel, The Curator, is forthcoming. She teaches at the California Institute of the Arts
GABRIELLE CIVIL is a black woman poet, conceptual and performance artist originally from Detroit, MI. Over the last ten years, she has premiered over twenty original performance works nationally (Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC) and internationally (Mexico, Puerto Rico, The Gambia).She is currently disseminating work from her 2008-2009 Fulbright Fellowship project "In and Out of Place: Making Black Feminist Performance Art in Mexico" and is circulating Swallow the Fish, her critical/creative text on race, body and performance art. She teaches at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN. The aim of all her work is to open up space.
CARINA GIA FERRO, writer and interdisciplinary performer, received her BA from U.C. Berkeley, and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a professor at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago. Her poems were most recently published or are forthcoming in Verse Daily, Arsenic Lobster, The Encyclopedia Project and Windy City Queer.
KRISTA FRANKLIN is a poet and visual artist from Dayton, OH who lives and works in Chicago. Her poetry and mixed medium collages have been published in lifestyle and literary journals such as Coon Bidness, Copper Nickel, RATTLE, Indiana Review, Ecotone, Clam andCallaloo, and in the anthologies Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K andGathering Ground. Her visual art has been featured on the covers of award-winning books, and exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions. Franklin is a Cave Canem Fellow, a co-founder of 2nd Sun Salon, a community meeting space for writers, visual and performance artists, musicians and scholars, and a teaching artist for Young Chicago Authors, Neighborhood Writing Alliance, and numerous organizations in the city of Chicago.
JOHN KEENE is a writer, translator and Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He has a B.A. from Harvard and an M.F.A. from New York University. He was a longtime member of the Dark Room Collective, an organization that from 1988 to 1998 celebrated and gave greater visibility to emerging and established writers of color. His first novel, Annotations, was published by New Directions in 1995. A new collection of poems entitled Seismosis, in collaboration with Christopher Stackkhouse, was published by 1913 Press in 2006.
THE CHICAGO CALLING ARTS FESTIVAL presents multi-disciplinary collaborations during Chicago Artists Month and collaborated with Red Rover Series on Experiment #51. For the 6th Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival, people in the Chicago area will work with others outside of Chicago — both in the U.S. and abroad; these collaborations include a range of art forms, such as music, dance, film, literature, and intermedia — prepared or improvised.http://www.chicagocalling.org
RED ROVER SERIES is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. The series was founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin.
Email ideas for reading experiments
to us at redroverseries@yahoogroups.com
The schedule for events is listed at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/redroverseriesPOSTED BY JENNIFER KARMIN AT 11:16 AM http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
September 22, 2011
A Weekend of Reading Poetry in the Great Lakes
I'll be taking some new poems out for a spin in the next few weeks with two upcoming events in Ypsilanti, Michigan & Chicago, Illinois:
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30TH
The Madhouse Poetry SeriesFriday September 30, 2011 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
The Ugly Mug Cafe317 W. Cross Street
Ypsilanti, Michigan 48197 Get DirectionsTHE MADHOUSE POETRY SERIES
LIVE POETRY AND MUSIC
FEATURING THE WORK OF:
* KAT STEIH
* ELIZABETH MIKECSH
* JASON POWELL
* NICOLAS VANDERPOOL
* LEO JARRET
* ERIK STEIGER
* CONNOR MORRELL
* ERIC LEIGHTON
** AND VERY SPECIAL GUEST POET: SAMIYA BASHIR **
ART WORK BY ERIC STEIGER.
SEPTEMBER 30TH 2011
7-9 PM THE UGLY MUG
317 W. CROSS ST.
YPSILANTI, MI
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1ST
Experiment #51: Encyclopedia Volume 2 (F-K)Saturday October 1, 2011 at 5:00pmOuter Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, Illinois 60642 Get DirectionsRed Rover Series
"Readings that play with reading."
Experiment #51: Encyclopedia Volume 2 (F-K)The readers/performers are Samiya Bashir, Tisa Bryant, Gabrielle Civil, Carina Farrero, Krista Franklin, and John Keene.
Price: $4 suggested donation
Outer Space Studio
WICKER PARK/BUCKTOWN
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Ticket Info: 4.00http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
August 16, 2011
Yeah, so I clearly abandoned this blog long ago.
Wanna se...
Wanna see what I'm doing and blabbing about now?
Check me out either on Twitter or at Tumblr.
Someday this web-life will keep up with actual life. But I'm not sure what all that crazy someday comes with, so let's just do what we can for now, huh?http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
April 18, 2011
It's National Poetry Month! Check out my new poem on The Rumpus!
National Poetry Month, Day 18: "Transparent to Visible Light" by Samiya Bashir
Across the seas, and then across the
seas, an aircraft carried full and whole
a world: as far apart as their fair
hostess could achieve sat mother and
father and their little girl who sucked
a sulking, tortured, fraying curl she
wound from back of head to tip of tongue,
smacking strands against her lips like a
kiss. Yesterday's newsprint sat unfurled
across her father's lap. Read: football,
bombings, despots, plagues. His visage hung
a worrisome landscape; the contours
of his body, once young and poised and
tight in flight, followed the sun then. Now
he chases last night's moon toward all he
had left behind. His girl swallows chunks
of hair. His wife flops the noon away
propped against the window, a pillow
strewn between shoulder, neck and vapor;
eyes closed to the sky blue blanket rough
hewn with tapering three o'clock stars.
As her husband stretched his long legs out
to the aisle away from his paper
everything he once knew warped and burned.
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.comwww.samiyabashir.com
