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Samiya Bashir

Goodreads Author

Born

in Amidst Midwestern cornfields, in an Ypsilanti hospital that burned down long ago., The United States

October 27

Website

http://www.samiyabashir.com

Twitter

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Genre

Poetry, Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

Member Since

July 2007

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Reach out to connect!
Samiya Bashir is represented by Blue Flower Arts.
blueflowerarts.com || anya@blueflowerarts.com || 619-944-9247

Sometimes Samiya Bashir makes poems of dirt. Sometimes zeros and ones. Sometimes variously rendered text. Sometimes light. Her work has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d.

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 Reach out to connect!
Samiya Bashir is represented by Blue Flower Arts.
blueflowerarts.com || anya@blueflowerarts.com || 619-944-9247

Sometimes Samiya Bashir makes poems of dirt. Sometimes zeros and ones. Sometimes variously rendered text. Sometimes light. Her work has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d.

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 videopoems 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. ...more

152 posts
Samiya Bashir's Blog

Let’s Bloom!

:: New Season, Whodis? :: ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Read more of this blog post »

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Published on March 20, 2025 15:49

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Samiya Bashir’s books

Average rating: 4.25 · 244 ratings · 28 reviews · 13 distinct works • Similar authors

	Field Theories 4.22 avg rating — 111 ratings — published 2017 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Freeman's Animals by John Freeman (Goodreads Author), Anuradha Roy (Contributor), Debra Gwartney (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 3.87 avg rating — 31 ratings — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Best Black Women's Erotica 2 4.26 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 2003 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Poetry Foundation Magazine, July/August 2024 by Adrian Matejka (Editor), Jessica Abughattas (Contributor), Angela Ball (Contributor) 4.07 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 2024	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Where the Apple Falls 4.14 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 2005 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Gospel: poems 4.50 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2009 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Affordable Housing Reader by Elizabeth J. Mueller (Editor), J. Rosie Tighe (Editor), Andrew Whittemore 4.24 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 2012 — 12 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Bettering American Poetry, Volume 2 by Amy King (Goodreads Author), Jayy Dodd (Editor), Camile Rankine (Editor) 4.57 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2017	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	I Hope This Helps 4.18 avg rating — 11 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Ecotone Almanac by Samiya Bashir (Goodreads Author), Lauren Camp (Goodreads Author), ShaLeigh Comerford 4.71 avg rating — 7 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Samiya Bashir…

Samiya is Currently Reading

Samiya is currently reading

Steering The Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story

by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Oct 24, 2019 09:25AM

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Unlimited Memory: How to Use Advanced Learning Strategies to Learn Faster, Remember More and be More Productive (Mental Mastery, #1)

by Kevin Horsley

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Aug 17, 2019 09:58PM

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The Poetics of Space

by Gaston Bachelard

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Jul 27, 2019 09:37PM

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Samiya’s Recent Updates

Samiya Bashir wrote a new blog post Let’s Bloom! :: New Season, Whodis? :: ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Read more of this blog post »
Mar 21, 2025 12:03AM · like

More of Samiya's books…

Samiya’s Quotes

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

3699 likes

“Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

tags: obsession, poetry

1417 likes

“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”
― Wallace Stevens

tags: poetry

205 likes

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”
― Lucille Clifton

59 likes

Samiya’s Friend Comments

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message 2: by dollmatic

Jan 29, 2009 12:30AM

thanks for the add, miss.

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message 1: by Daniel

Dec 18, 2007 07:59AM

Samiya, I have added Where the Apple Falls, Best Black Women's Erotica 2 and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art to my to-read list.

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Samiya Bashir’s Followers (86)

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Samiya Bashir

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Let’s Bloom!

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Samiya Bashir’s Followers (86)

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