Samiya Bashir
“As a writer, an artist, a human, I’d rather work toward my own purpose—or even the purpose of a particular piece of work—than some purpose ascribed to me which, necessarily, comes attached to the agenda of the ascriber. Of course, as we work toward those purposes—good, ill, or indifferent—that rascally rabbit responsibility lurks in the dusty corners and ashy knee-backs.”
“There are pecks here, as units of measure for hidden sweetness. And dag! Dag is here, scatted at Detroit depth. Field Theories is flush with blue notes, swung in the exercise and exorcism of blue devils, the off minor, off spherical acoustics of “baby we won” and “not the father” are folded into the gravity of a unified feel, the beauty and violence of inseparable differences, some impossible someone’s arms. Our tongues are in the pitch black mouth she conjures and records. This is our music.”
“At first, it may seem surprising that this energetically in-your-face collection references physics. But when Bashir (Gospel) notes of thermodynamics, ‘When Albert Murray said/ the second law adds up to/ the blues…/ he meant it//… more how my grandmother/ warned that men like women// with soft hands,’ you see where she’s going. ‘Planck’s constant’ denotes holding to others as we climb to get ahead; ‘Ground state,’ a surge toward intimacy; and ‘We call it dark matter because it doesn’t interact with light,’ America’s increasing xenophobia. Thus does Bashir sort out life’s demands, periodically grounding her exploration with references to African American legend John Henry and his wife, Polly Ann. VERDICT Interesting work; anyone who can combine woolly mammoths and the lyric ‘I’m gonna be your number one” in one poem knows her stuff.’”
“In this electrifying collection, Bashir co-opts the vernacular of thermodynamics to generate clever, ambitious poems: ‘We call it dark matter because it doesn’t interact with light’; ‘Blackbody curve’; and, of course, the titular ‘Field Theories.’ Bashir plays with double meanings, unusual narrative structure, and experimental visual arrangements, such as ‘Law of total probability,’ about an office shooting, from which conspicuous circular portions of the text have been removed. In another, ‘Blackbody radiation,’ the text has been scrambled on the page, thrown together with mathematical signs and symbols. The book alternates between these science-inspired, avant-garde pieces and an extended sequence about the legendary John Henry. By pairing this monumental black figure with the terminology of scientific fields that have been defined by whiteness, Bashir creates a jarring, resonant contrast in this substantial gathering. The result is a dynamic, shape-shifting machine of perpetual motion that reveals poignant observance (‘Even Jesus let / his baker’s dozen fend / for themselves once’) and verges toward hallucination (‘We blow smoke rings and shape them into big beaned cloud gates’).”
“...a book you’ll constantly come back to for both beauty and guidance.”
“Gospel music, like its secular cousin the blues, never wallows in pity, but instead seeks to transcend pain and reach glory. Bashir’s book makes the same trip…it’s the word’s original meaning that I think Bashir best exemplifies in this book—good story or message—because Gospel is, at heart, a collection of poems that suggest we are not alone in this mess of a world.”
“Samiya Bashir writes bravely and beautifully from the inside out. We are fortunate to have her blazing, graceful poems in this fine first collection.”
Samiya Bashir is a prolific poet, artist, writer, performer, educator, and advocate. She is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories (Nightboat, 2017), winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Awards Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Her other books of poetry are Gospel (Redbone Press, 2009), and Where the Apple Falls (Redbone Press, 2005). Her next book, I Hope This Helps, is forthcoming in Spring 2025 from Nightboat Books.
She is the editor of Black Women’s Erotica and co-editor of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana. She has collaborated with visual and media artists on numerous projects, including the limited-edition artists’ book, Hades D.W.P., with artists Alison Saar and Tracy Schlapp. Her work has also been included in numerous anthologies, including There's A Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman, and Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, edited by Michael Walsh. Her most recent multi-media project is “I Hope This Helps” at the Africa Center in Harlem, a multi-sensory exhibition exploring critical issues impacting and reflecting the human condition.
Samiya’s honors include the Rome Prize in Literature, the Pushcart Prize, and Oregon’s Arts & Culture Council Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature, plus numerous other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies including MacDowell, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the New York Council on the Arts. In addition to her books, Samiya has served as editor to national magazines and anthologies of literature and artwork. In 2002 she was co-founder of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization and writers' festival for LGBT writers of African descent, with whom she worked through 2015.
In an interview with PEN America, she was asked about her influences and obsessions. “The metaphysical world,” she replied. “There was a period as a kid when I was like the neighborhood bike fixer. But I wasn’t fixing bikes to help people! I really wanted to know how they worked and why and what if they did this or that instead. It was a selfish altruism. In high school I wanted to take auto shop for much the same reasons. I’m from Michigan, so the making of cars was a distinct flavor of the cultural air back then. For b.s. reasons of gender and class, I wasn’t allowed into auto shop and was routed instead into typing. I was, of course, righteously livid. I also suspected typing would be useful because I’d once been that frustrated eight year old who couldn’t correctly hold a pencil so as not to disfigure the fingers, whose mother rolled her eyes and said something akin to, “stop being so dramatic, girl,” said that I could learn how to type and write all I wanted. It’s both true that typing became culturally, personally, and professionally useful. It’s also true that I still can’t fix my own car. Because gender. Because class. Because bullshit, really. See? Obsessions. Influences.”
Samiya earned a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Formerly an associate professor at Reed College, she currently serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. She lives in Harlem.
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(c) Nina Johnson
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