I Hope This Helps Samiya Bashir in Residence
Center for Poetry, Michigan State University
Fri, January 17, 2025 - Wed, January 22, 2025 at Multiple
MSU is thrilled to welcome Samiya Bashir for a week of community and campus-based events. Save the dates and stay tuned for more details!
With deep gratitude to the MSU Office for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, MSU African American and African Studies (AIIS), MSU Creative Writing Program, and the Residential College in the Arts & Humanities for their support of this residency.
All Events Free and Open to the Public Unless Otherwise Noted
Friday, January 17, 3:00 - 4:00 p.m., Wells Hall, 619 Red Cedar Rd., MSU Campus
machine of perpetual motion: Samiya Bashir (A Creative Writing Community event)
Join the MSU Creative Writing Community for this conversation with Bashir about her life's practice as an interdisciplinary maker.
Sunday, January 19, 12:00-1:30 p.m., Capital Area District Library (CADL) Downtown Branch, 401 S. Capitol Ave., Lansing
Poetry for the People Poetry Workshop
In 1991, June Jordan established the Poetry for the People Workshop in the African American Studies Department at University of California-Berkeley. The workshop had three guiding prinicples: That students will not take themselves seriously unless we who teach them honor and respect them in every practical way that we can; that words can change the world and save our lives; and that poetry is the highest art and the most exacting service devoted to our most serious and our most imaginative deployment of verbs and nouns on behalf of whatever and whoever we cherish. The workshops were accessible and welcoming to writers at all levels, and, at the close of each semester, students produced an anthology of poetry and showcased their work at community and on-campus public poetry readings. Although Jordan died in 2002, PFTP continues to this day at Berkeley and at numerous colleges and universities across the country. Samiya Bashir, an alum of the program under June Jordan, will lead this generative poetry workshop and share its model to empower local poets to establish their own.
Monday, January 20, 6:00-7:30 p.m., LookOut Gallery, Snyder-Phillips Hall 361 Physics Rd., MSU Campus
Opening reception, Emerging Visions, featuring I Hope This Helps by Samiya Bashir, and photography by Darryl DeAngelo Terrell
Tuesday, January 21, 7:00 p.m., The Robin Theatre, 1101 S. Washington Ave., Lansing
Authors On Exile: A Conversation with Shastri Akella, Samiya Bashir, and Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Doors open at 6:30 p.m.; Donations accepted.
Visit The Robin Theatre for tickets and more info
Thanks to Mike Copperman, MSU Dept. of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures (WRAC) for curating this event.
Wednesday, January 22, 7:00 p.m., RCAH Theater, Snyder-Phillips Hall, 361 Physics Rd., MSU Campus
I Hope This Helps: Samiya Bashir Reading/Presentation
Reception/Book signing to follow in LookOut Gallery, Snyder-Phillips Hall