Samiya Bashir
Samiya Bashir is a poet, librettist, and multimedia artist whose work moves across page, stage, and space. She is the author of I Hope This Helps (Nightboat, 2025) and Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her poem “Here’s the Thing:”—originally commissioned as a choral-orchestral work with music by Julian Wachner for the Washington Chorus in celebration of their sixtieth anniversary—first emerged during her time as a Rome Prize Fellow in Literature, and through the twin upheavals of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 uprisings. Originally set to premiere at the (former?) Kennedy Center in Fall 2020, the full piece has yet to be performed. The poem was first published in Freeman’s: Animals (2022). Bashir lives in Harlem and serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.
Samiya Bashir is a poet, librettist, and multimedia artist whose work moves across page, stage, and space. She is the author of I Hope This Helps (Nightboat, 2025) and Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her poem “Here’s the Thing:”—originally commissioned as a choral-orchestral work with music by Julian Wachner for the Washington Chorus in celebration of their sixtieth anniversary—first emerged during her time as a Rome Prize Fellow in Literature, and through the twin upheavals of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 uprisings. Originally set to premiere at the (former?) Kennedy Center in Fall 2020, the full piece has yet to be performed. The poem was first published in Freeman’s: Animals (2022). Bashir lives in Harlem and serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.