4 Sessions: Wednesdays, January 15, 22, 29, February 5
6:00-8:00pm ET
Samiya Bashir

Samiya Bashir brings three decades of experience teaching poetry workshops, editing manuscripts, and coaching writers from early drafts through extensive revisions to publication. As the author of four collections of poetry, including Field Theories (2017), and my forthcoming book I Hope This Helps (2025), I bring deep experience in craft and creativity. My work spans multimedia and explores the intersections of poetry, science, and social justice, with poems appearing in recent issues of Poetry Magazine, Zyzzyva, Orion Magazine, Freeman’s Journal, and more.

In some ways, you are the places where you've been in your life. Experience is carried in our bodies and our best poetry creates a uniquely poetic experience that moves readers. In this craft seminar we will work together to identify how the poem is doing what it is doing to our bodies and minds.

Bring your poems and work to find the poem’s voice. We’ll turn poems like glass in a window to find their shifting light. We’ll spend four weeks working to see – and create – our work anew. There is no workshop component to this class, but there will be opportunities to share your work and interact with other participants.

Session One: Limning the Line
Session Two: Divining Breath
Session Three: Perception: Sound & The Body, Part I
Session Four: Active Location: Sound & The Body, Part II

Workshop Highlights:

• Develop strategies for listening to the poem as it helps you to find its form

• Synchronous and asynchronous exercises

• Opportunities to share work with other participants and practice the strategies we discuss

Two full scholarship available for BIPOC writers, as well as two partial scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, January 6.