Samiya Bashir's Blog, page 8
March 8, 2011
Chimurenga Newsroom › call for classifieds
(Don't need money. don't take fame. Don't need no credit card to ride this train.)
Chimurenga Newsroom › call for classifieds
Chimurenga Magazine's next publishing project is The Chimurenga Chronicle – a once-off, one-day-only edition of a speculative, future-forward newspaper that travels back in time to re-imagine the present.
Produced in collaboration with Nigeria's Cassava Republic Press and Kenya's Kwani?, it is a multi-section broadsheet with news, long-form journalism, comics, sport, art etc. and 100-page books magazine to be released in September 2011, in numerous African cities.
The current tools we have at our disposal, particularly in the area of knowledge production and dissemination, don't help much to grasp contemporary reality. What we need is a Time Machine! A device that will allow us to understand the numerous different temporalities, dispersed entanglements and overlapping time-spaces that define today.
The Chimurenga Chronicle is one such machine. Back-dated to the week May 18-24 2008, it's situated during the first week of the so-called xenophobic violence in South Africa, two years ago – but it focuses outward, covering the events, scenes and situations around the world during this period.
As part of the project we view the newspaper classifieds section as a literary and art platform; a public space that delights in prescience, precision, and provocation and uses wit as a formidable weapon against the tyranny of everyday banality. Yes, it sells out – it sells out big. It sells everything from undying love, to first editions of Fanon, from rhetorical job offers to shards of hope.
We therefore invite submission of nano-novels, micro-art works, flash poetry, philosophical aphorism, minima moralia, haikus of the heart, found objects and more, for sections including sales, wanted, services, jobs, personalsand obituaries.
All classifieds submitted should be no longer than 50 words and should relate to the week May 18
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 27, 2011
For Oscar Night: James Franco Talks Poetry
James Franco Talks Poetry (interviewed by Travis Nichols) @ The Poetry FoundationBut I had been interested in Crane before I was at Warren Wilson and before I had even gone back to UCLA. I was doing a movie in New Orleans, a weird movie called Sonny, and I was reading a Harold Bloom book. I'm not quite sure which one, but he mentioned Hart Crane. And then I got Crane's poems and Bloom wrote an introduction to the collection that I bought, and in that introduction he mentioned Paul Mariani's book, The Broken Tower. So then I found that. I remember reading it and thinking, "Oh, this is a great character. I'd love to play this character." Crane's life was the life of the quintessential struggling artist. I mean, James Joyce, he's a great writer, but it would be hard to make his life dramatic. You could, but it's just not readily dramatic. I guess you could say, "Oh, well, he went to Paris and his daughter was kind of crazy and he hung out with Sylvia Beach, then the war came. . . ."
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 24, 2011
Something to [think/be/do/act/fart/sleep/puke/love/&] about... (maybe)
"Focusing on the theme of the body, the exhibition will revolve around several entirely new series while also incorporating little-known early work. Mann is admired for her passionate use of photography to address issues of love and loss, expressed in images of her children and southern landscapes. Her recent work uses obsolete photographic methods and nearly abstract images to push the limits of her medium and to dig deeper into themes of mortality and vulnerability."http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 15, 2011
From Poetry Daily - Afaa M. Weaver
Black women keep secrets tied up in hankies
they stuff in their bras, secrets of how their necks
are connected to their spines in the precise gyration
of a jelly sweetened in nights they had to keep
to themselves, nights prowlers came in to change
the faces of their children, secrets like the good
googa mooga laughter they do with each other
when something affirms their suspicions, when
their eyes are made the prayerbooks of fate crafted
in the wisdom that knows there is no north or south
in black wandering, searching the new land, a song
they wrestle from black men, the broken ones
who had to be shown where and how to stand,
how to respect pain and the way it governs itself,
secrets, things made out of generations and not kept
in the glass selections of an old juke box.
Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
Sometimes you find what you're not even looking for...
Oooohhh Pablo!
First because I lovethis picture.
Then because I love this poem even more.
Injustice, Pablo Neruda (tr. Alastair Reid)
Whoever discovers the who of me will find out the who of you,
and the why, and the where.
Early on, I discovered the range of injustice.
Hunger was not just hunger,
but rather a measure of man.
cold and wind were also measures.
The proud man racked up a hundred hungers, then fell.
Pedro was buried at the hundredth frost.
The poor house endured a single wind.
And I learned that centimeter and gram,
spoon and tongue, were measures of greed,
and that the harassed man soon fell
in a hole, and knew no more.
Nothing more. That was the setting,
the real gift, the reward, light, life.
That was it, suffering cold and hunger,
not having shoes, feeling fear
in front of the judge, in front of the other one,
the other being with his sword or his inkwell,
and so, digging and cutting,
sewing, making bread, planting wheat,
hammering every nail the wood needed,
burrowing in the earth as in intestines
to drag out, blind, the cracking coal,
and, even more, going up rivers and mountains,
riding horses, tending to ships
baking tiles, blowing glass, washing clothes
in such a way as to make that seem
a kingdom newly brought into being,
grapes shining in their clusters,
when man set his mind on being content,
and was not, and was not so. I was discovering
the laws of misery,
the throne of bloodstained gold,
the whore freedom,
the land with no overcoat,
the wounded, worn-out heart,
and the sound of the dead, tearless,
dry, like falling stones.
And then I left off being a child
because I understood then that for my people
life was not allowed
and the grave has forbidden them.
Thanks P.A.P.-Blog for this!http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
February 14, 2011
February 1, 2011
Me @ AWP
I'm looking forward to this year's AWP Conference in DC. Hoping everyone (me too!) gets there smoothly and safely. Here's a quick list of some spots where you can find me.
Thursday, February 3 · 9:00 a.m.-10:15 p.m.
Thurgood Marshall West Room
Marriott Wardman Park, Mezzanine Level
R111. Courting Risk: A Multicultural/Multi-Genre Reading. Natalie Diaz, L. Lamar Wilson, Susan Southard, Samiya Bashir, Ariel Robello, Khadijah Queen) Courting Risk is an annual reading series which promotes the work of emerging writers, particularly those who are women, LGBT, and/or of color. Focus is given also to writers who address difficult political or social issues in multiple genres and art forms. A brief introduction of the series will be followed by a reading from six powerful emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and cross-genre work, with time allotted at the end for Q&A.
Thursday, February 3 · Noon.-1:15 p.mDelaware Suite Room
Marriott WardmanPark, Lobby LevelR146. The Poem as Ghost / Haunted Americas. (Camille Norton, Marilyn Nelson, Matthew Zapruder, Ramon Garcia, Samiya Bashir) What speaks through us when we speak of America? To what extent are certain poems ghosted or possessed by the past? This panel offers a poetic inquiry into a nation haunted by the wounds, silences, and the psychic return of history. We consider the ghosts of, among others, Emmett Till, Edgar Allan Poe, the war dead, the bodies of those displaced through migration, and the ghostly landscape of an America repressed by the strip-malls and freeways of our postmodern experience. Thursday, February 3 · 7:30pm - 9:30pm
Mark Our Words: A Reading for Encyclopedia Project & War Diaries
Location: The DC Center for LGBT Community, 1318 U Street NW Washington, DC 20009
Cost: Free
Website: http://www.thedccenter.org
Description: Join us as we join forces to celebrate the publication of Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K, and the arrival of War Diaries, the last in a series of arts-collaborative publications from AIDS Project Los Angeles, with some rowdy, smart, sexy and brave writers and artists who mean what they say, and say it with fire! Featuring Samiya Bashir, Amina Cain, Duriel Harris, Jen Hofer, A. Naomi Jackson, John R. Keene Jr., Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Robin Coste Lewis, Chana Morgenstern, Vanessa Place, Amarnath Ravva, Kevin Simmonds, Anna Joy Springer, Terese Svoboda, Bronwen Tate, Matias Viegener and Sarah Fran Wisby. Hosted by Tisa Bryant
Saturday, February 5 · 2:45pm - 3:00pm
Book Signing: Gospel: poems
Location: Cave Canem Table / Book Fair
http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
January 4, 2011
Starting off the New Year with a Discussion of Language
"The theme throughout," says Wallace, "seems to be that any man doing something typically considered to be feminine, like carrying a bag or wearing tight pants, needs to be policed by those around him until he conforms and just orders a Miller Lite already."
The article is overall pretty thoughtful and the kind of media analysis you'd expect from BitchMedia. When Wallace ends the article by calling out the ad campaign as a "douchefest" it reminds me that if we are going to take on the cloak of policing the language of others, it behooves us to be at least as critical about our own while we do it.
Bottom line: If we're calling the kettle black let's no do it while sitting in the pot. The rise of "douche" and "douchebag" as synonymous insults to "asshole" or some such seems to smack of the growing desire (noted so well in your review of this ad campaign) to reinject misogyny into every facet of our language and life.
People aren't commonly called enema bags or colostomy bags -- although everyone has an ass; everyone pisses and shits -- instead people are called "douchebags" in support (conscious or not) of some passive agreement that nothing can be more disgusting, weak, and please-god-not-me than a vagina. You can offend someone by calling them an ass; but you can start a nasty fight by calling them a pussy. Douchebag stems from, as you rightly say, the same faulty logic.
Everytime I hear "douche" -- Oh no, let's not keep our ladyparts clean! Ladyparts! How disgusting! -- I cringe. I don't expect that kind of cringeworthy language to close out thoughtful, well-written articles in Bitch Magazine.
What do y'all think about this? I'm ever so curious ...
Comment Below!http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
December 31, 2010
Happy New Year!
2010 was filled with so much love and joy, friends and family, new people and old homies.
I am grateful to you all.
I'm wishing everyone all manner of goodness in 2011.
Let's create it.
Let's be it.
Let's share it.
♥http://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
December 30, 2010
Twitter Poet Flattery
seeing lines from your poems out of context.twice. in one morning minute. :-)
(homage = awesome/schwee. still, it's a bit twilight zoney) :)
C E N T O R A M A: These Fine Things Which Separate Us from Beasts: "I would be assuming a great deal in saying I'd like to hold water in my cupped hands as we must hold all, swagger and lager and fully loaded..."
(note: title from "Waiting on the Reading" and a line from "Catch" - both in Gospel: poems )
right on: @centoramahttp://scryptkeeper.blogspot.com
www.samiyabashir.com
