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I Hope This Helps reflects on the excruciating metamorphosis of an artist, “a twinkle-textured disco-ball Jenga set” constrained and shaped by the limits of our reality: time, money, work, not to mention compounding global crises. Think of a river constrained by levees, a bonsai clipped and bent, a human body bursting through shapewear. Begging the question, what can it mean to thrive in the world as it is, Bashir says, “Rats thrive in sewers so / maybe I’m thriving.” In these moving, sometimes harrowing meditations, Bashir reveals her vulnerable inner life, how she has built herself brick by brick into an artist.
ISBN: 9781643622729
Paperback: 144 pages, 6 x 9 in
Publication Date: April 15, 2025
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:: Advance Praise ::
I Hope this Helps presents readers with a kind of Samiya-Bashirian Ode, teeming with lucid music, candid witness and radical play. These poems blend levity and gravity, joy and sadness; they meld genres of memoir, essay and art. The Bashirian Ode is a testament of inner and outer empathy: the ways we study and care for ourselves and others. I Hope This Helps is akin to an illustrated, illuminated guidebook, a lantern of language for surviving dark times.
-Terrance Hayes
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Samiya Bashir’s I Hope This Helps is exuberant, choreographed cartography, improvisational typography, each page carrying the prints of a real human being/s, collaborative, lost-and-found, ekphrasis until it must bleed into real linotype. (sometimes words just don’t carry the tune), sheet music, blank page of kindergarten paper and I feel the shame, monstrous performance, performance of Monster, self-address, us-addressed, no-address, home-as-road-becomes-the-road-home, history and tyranny, both literary and not, Eliot’s “The Waste land” to Asghar’s “Pluto Shits on the Universe,” June Jordan to Amiri Baraka, Reagan to Trump, plague to plague, bulletproof vest to bulletproof poem, killer bees to killer knees, quoting June Jordan quoting Auschwitz survivor Elly Gross, “And what shall we do,” she asked, “we who did not die? What shall we do now? How shall we grieve, and cry out loud, and face down despair?” Quoting Maxine Hong Kingston, “In a time of destruction, create something.” I read Samiya Bashir and it registers—something has been created.
Something has been created titled I Hope This Helps.
This reader’s answer: It does.
—Diane Seuss
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Of what practical value is a life in art? What knowledge do we produce that provides the means to sustain light and understanding to life? Samiya Bashir’s I Hope this Helps? starts with some of the right questions in our screw-tightening times with admirable candor, curiosity, and generative tangent.
What do we do to live and thrive—as Black people, joyous and queer, new neighbors and strangers, our full humanity—dwarfed in the shadows by towers of power, distraction, and fear?
Bashir’s poetry leans into these questions using her superpower—pausing to listen—over-hearing and hearing over—“hearing” under and re-writing, reinscribing her Journey—through the “twinkle textured disco ball Jenga set”—and shows the reader how creative power fuels us to begin again. And again.
—Erica Hunt
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I Hope This Helps is a map that shapeshifts with each reading.
Beheld, it holds, beholds the “meaning of a moment like ours.”
—Jen Bervin
FIELD THEORIES :: Samiya Bashir
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 her third collection, Bashir (Gospel) displays an intriguingly multivalent approach to the objectivities and subjectivities of black experience reflected in her multimedia collaborations.”
Albert Murray said, “the second law of thermodynamics ain’t nothing but the blues.” So 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? Woven through experimental lyrics is a heroic crown of sonnets that wonders about love and intent, identity and hybridity, and how we embody these interstices and for what reasons and to what ends.
cover image: Lonely Chamber (T.O.), 2011, Toyin Ojih Odutola
Praise for FIeld Theories
Bashir subverts that idea of a singular framework to reveal the multiplicity of reality: where there is one reality there will be other realities told in various forms, splitting the dominant narrative into a prism of narratives. -Hyperallergic
Thus does Bashir sort out life’s demands…anyone who can combine woolly mammoths and the lyric ‘I’m gonna be your number one” in one poem knows her stuff.’ -Library Journal
In this electrifying collection, Bashir co-opts the vernacular of thermodynamics to generate clever, ambitious poems…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. -Booklist
In her third collection, Bashir (Gospel) displays an intriguingly multivalent approach to the objectivities and subjectivities of black experience reflected in her multimedia collaborations. Bashir’s experimental visual gestures, such as a bullet-hole riddled prose poem on the law of probability, resonate as bluesy meditations on cosmic entropy’s presence in the irreversible occurrences of American lives. While fans of Kevin Young will appreciate the pop of unexpected end rhymes and a present-tense narrative impulse, those of the more associative Ashberian school will enjoy such playful titles as ‘Universe as an infant: fatter than expected and kind of lumpy,’ which features a private visit with Groucho Marx. Whether depicting the faces of marginalized citizens at late-night truck stops or cross-sectioning ‘bloodstreaks through musculoskeletal structure,’ Bashir positions the slings and arrows of black American life as both empirically observable and available for radical, and movingly layered, interpretations. -Publishers Weekly
What makes this work particularly remarkable and interesting is the way that, even as the poems demand that you reflect on and identify your own position (one possibly outside the first-person plural position they mark for themselves) they allow a movement-alongside and sustain a relation, one whose terms include an awareness of the multiple kinds of fields the poems work to make perceptible. …Bashir’s book is beautiful, thoughtful, graceful, and strange. It is a book that makes the conditions of sense-making, the conditions of life in a system with an inherited racist history, the conditions of formal movement in a poem, available to sense in new ways. - Chicago Review
There's A Revolution Outside, My Love
Letters from a Crisis
Edited by Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman
This kaleidoscopic portrait of an unprecedented time brings together some of our most treasured writers today.
Galvanizing and lyrical, this is a deeply profound anthology of writing filled with pain and beauty, warmth and intimacy. A remarkable feat of empathy, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love offers solace in a time of swirling protest, change, and violence--reminding us of the human scale of the upheaval, and providing hope for a kinder future.
Praise for There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love
Angry, rueful, and defiant, the impressive roster of award-winning writers and academics portrays a nation wracked by pain…. An eloquent and urgent collection.” —Kirkus, starred review
Together this book is a maelstrom of grief, anger, fear and confusion, with glimmers of gratitude and hope: a comprehensive emotional document of a moment.” —Sebastian Modak, The New York Times
“A potent and momentous in-the-moment response to an urgent and indelible time.” —Booklist
“Revelatory collection of heartfelt reflections…Forty treasured poets, scholars, and essayists document their experience of international racial reawakening…and consider them alongside their survival of dueling pandemics, namely COVID-19 and systemic racism.” —Oprah Magazine, “The Best Books to Pick Up This May”
“This powerful, riveting collection gives us the community we have longed for during the past year, the connection we have missed. It tells us the truth; it tells us what it is like.” —The Minneapolis Star Tribune
New!
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May 2022!
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New! 〰️ May 2022! 〰️
Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology
$24.95, BUY NOW
This anthology amplifies and centers LGBTQIA+ voices and perspectives in a collection of contemporary nature poetry. Showcasing over two hundred queer writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Queer Nature offers a new context for and expands upon the canon of nature poetry while also offering new lenses through which to view queerness and the natural world. To see the full list of contributing poets, please see the table of contents here.
Praise for Queer Nature
When heteronormativity prescribes a binary to everything it touches—something is either natural or unnatural—what a salve to reclaim and celebrate nature in its sprawling wonder and unfettered queerness. This is an invitation to readers who’ve long felt excluded from representations of the natural and pastoral. No longer stripped of its wildness and subtext, the nature reflected in these poems is the breadth of human experience: its complexities and aches, its trauma and desires, its richness and possibilities. Queer Nature understands nature resists constraint and simplification. It is boundless and borderless. It belongs to everyone.
—Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a WildfireImagine my delight and pride in being a part of this anthology! Imagine your pleasure as you immerse yourself in this beauty of queerness! This is a must-have book for all.
—Chrystos, author of Fire Power, In Her I Am, and Not VanishingThis anthology makes visible the astonishing range and impact of queer poets. Page after page shimmers with emotional and intellectual pleasures—these poems will make you think, weep, sing, and sigh with relief. Michael Walsh’s remarkable curation reminds us what’s natural has always been queer and what’s queer is always natural.
—Eduardo C. Corral, author of GuillotineThe poems in Queer Nature investigate the ways we inhabit ourselves and our landscapes—everywhere unfurling, throwing roots, spores. Here, the ground is rich with worm and bone. Here, the concerns are both urgent and eternal. How do we locate the places where we can survive? How do we create them? And, ultimately, how will we create and recreate ourselves so we can thrive?
—Richard Siken, author of Crush and War of the FoxesI fell in love on nearly every page of Queer Nature. Sure, there is suffering to consider in our long journey into the light of acceptance and recognition, but what tumbles out of these poems again and again are affirmations of love and the reek of hope. This anthology is a homecoming. Readers will recognize many of these voices and be moved by the magnitude of the rich populous of queer eco-centric nature poets gathered here. I am less lonely, less terrified of my queerness, as I pour through these pages. This is a magnificent collection.
—Amber Flora Thomas, author of Eye of Water: PoemsThe poems in this remarkable collection work in both tandem and contradiction to make the irrefutable sound of queer ecologies. An aching intervention into the violent logics that position queerness as the antithesis of a natural world, Queer Nature says otherwise. The poems congeal, illuminating again and again that queer is nature. Queer is the animal. Queer are the hands “moved like rivers.” Queer is the genre of the poem itself—its small and infinite ecosystem.
—Stacey Waite, author of Butch Geography
The Pushcart Prize XLIII: Best of the Small Presses 2019 Edition (The Pushcart Prize)
by Bill Henderson
Featuring the poem “Field Theories,” awarded 2018 Pushcart Prize for Poetry!
“More good poems, essays and stories are found in these presses than any other place on the planet.” -Richard Ford
This 43rd edition of the annual Pushcart Prize – the most celebrated literary series in America – is further proof that these days the heat and heart of contemporary writing is often found in small presses scattered around the country and the world, far from the pressures of commercial centers.
As the variety of selections in PUSHCARTPRIZE XLIII indicates, it is a diverse community constantly infused by new stories, essays and poetry from small press authors with a vision of what is honest and vital. Over 70 authors are included from more than 50 presses.
Winner of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle, the Poets & Writers/Barnes & Nobel Writers For Writers recognition, and named with Pushcart Press as one of the most influential publications in the development of America publishing over the past century by Publishers Weekly, the Pushcart Prize presents over 600 pages of literary brilliance from both new and established authors.
An Ecotone Almanac is a guide to living through the seasons in relation to place. The book gathers fifteen entries from Ecotone’s Various Instructions department, in which writers and artists offer how-to’s, lists, formulas, and guides. Instructions from past contributors, including Samiya Bashir, Molly Tenenbaum, and Artress Bethany White, sit alongside work from writers and artists new to our pages, among them Bhanu Kapil, Malinda Maynor Lowery, and Janisse Ray. The cover and interior feature printer’s cuts and ornaments from the collection of letterpress studio and residency program Stelo Press.
Conveniently sized, with a section for your notes in the back, this book will be a companion for explorations of city and country as well as for writing group meetings, picnics, cookery, evening ponderings, and leisurely rambles closer to home.
Contributors: Samiya Bashir, Lauren Camp, ShaLeigh Comerford, Carlina Duan, Julia Gartrell, Aimi Hamraie, Emily Hilliard & Rebecca Wright, Joan Naviyuk Kane, Bhanu Kapil, Malinda Maynor Lowery, Alicia Jo Rabins, Janisse Ray, Jessi Slavich, Molly Tenenbaum, & Artress Bethany White
Bettering American Poetry
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Bettering American Poetry ::
We feel that to “better” American poetry is to jam dominant systems of taste to the best of our abilities, and to resignify the very phrase “American poetry” with the languages that it so desperately lacks. We intend to center voices of resistance, subjectivities that emerge from the radical margins, artists whose Americanness transcends nationalism and other borders, perspectives historically denied institutional backing--in short, poets and poetries that are urgent and necessary but do not get along nicely with Power. - The Editors
This anthology is an explosive Cri de Coeur of these times.
- Cathy Park Hong
Bettering American Poetry is verse of the most urgent kind. This is the kind of work that will take us through the next 4 years and the next 100.
- Nate Marshall
Thank you, editors, thank you, authors for utterly rearranging my cells.
-TC Tolbert
Gospel: Poems
An ecumenical resistance song in four parts.
We enter at the crossroads, tripped up by trickster deity Eshu-Elegba. A chorus of crows, led by Norse god Odin’s raven messengers Hugin & Munin*, guides us into each movement.
What I love about Bashir’s work is how her poems work against this enforced correcting. Many of her poems thrum with the erotic joy of queer black bodies, and her work celebrates the lived experiences of bodies that resist “remolding.”
—The Kenyon Review
In this passionate follow-up to 2005’s Lambda Literary Award finalist, Where the Apple Falls, Bashir’s poems challenge truth to stare down the power of fear and paralysis.
Read More »
:: Where the Apple Falls ::
“Samiya Bashir writes bravely and beautifully from the inside out. We are fortunate to have her blazing, graceful poems in this fine first collection.”
—Elizabeth Alexander
Here is where poetry resides at the intersections between woman/ female, both human and environmental, and the concepts to which she is often linked (without her consent): death; rebirth; victim; sexual/perverse. Seasons are crucial: from the birth of Spring through Autumn’s final harvest the work suggests a recasting of the farmer; a reclamation of both fall and redemption/ death/ (re)birth on her own terms.
“In her debut collection Where the Apple Falls, Samiya Bashir demands we listen and hear the symphony of stories that ‘sail on the ochre cushion of these moonlit poems.’ In ‘Moon Cycling,’ she writes: ‘Don’t come by my door/ Smellin’ fresh like that/ Sizzling like summer/ Steak medium rare/ I’ll think you are/ My supper.’ But she opens the door and her words and images grab us and never let go. She challenges ideas of edginess, religion, beauty, sexuality and imagination. Bashir’s language is vivid and compelling in lines like ‘Crooked back bowed into the new black moon.’ There’s remarkable womanness, vulnerability, pain and insight in these lines… Where the Apple Falls can at times be a difficult read, as many poems are dense and complex. But here is a new and provocative voice comfortable in the skin of her poems, secure in her poetic vision.
—Black Issues Book Review
:: Best Black Women's Erotica 2 ::
Exciting, humorous, and quite a resource of sensual navigation. Don’t be afraid to read it and smile.
—Terry McMillan
Share these provocative tales with someone you intimately love.
—BET
Samiya Bashir offers an exquisite collection of erotic fiction, showcasing hot, literate sex writing by African American women writers for all readers who enjoy women's erotica. Bashir showcases the hottest, most arousing and surprising erotic literature by African American women writers. Representing a wide range of styles and voices, these twenty stories offer a steamy assortment of fiction from over a dozen popular authors.
“Samiya Bashir, the new editor, demonstrates a rare gift for compiling anthologies….she’s given new life to what often seems the tiring venue of the erotic.” —Clean Sheets
Now available in Audio and E-Book formats!
Audible | iTunes | Kindle | Nook | Adobe Digital
Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art
Edited by Samiya Bashir, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Tony Medina
Role Call is described by its editors as a manifesto for this much maligned often misunderstood generation, eager to shake off the fetters of society's unflattering inaccurate labels. Its’ pages tell of a generation that has bravely taken up the challenge passed along by their forebears to fight for equality and justice.
"Welcome to the 21st Century!" bids the opening line of this literary "multimedia" experience, brought to us by three leading black author-activists of the post--Civil Rights Movement generation: Tony Medina, Samiya A. Bashir, and Quraysh Ali Lansana.
This collection of more than three hundred poems, essays, paintings, photos and mixed media representations features a myriad of voices of the generation that bridges the gap between the children of the Civil Rights Movement and those of the present hip hop movement.