Book Party! Welcome Samiya Bashir's "Gospel: poems" into the world! April 11, 2009

Samiya Bashir's new book is being born into the newness of spring and the University of Texas's John L. Warfield Center for African & African American Studies is throwin' a party!

Come and hear her read from her new book, Gospel: poems.

Gospel is 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. 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.

"We intended gospel to strike a happy medium for the down-trodden," said gospel music pioneer Thomas Dorsey. "This music lifted people out of the muck and mire of poverty and loneliness, of being broke, and gave them some kind of hope anyway. Make it anything but good news, it ceases to be gospel."

The good news, according to Bashir, is that we are neither alone in our mess, nor alone in our grasp of the tools to heal. In this pull-no-punches collection Bashir lays down a road map, a portable flashlight, and a shaky-legged escort to usher the way toward recovered sight and strength.

Advance Praise for Gospel: poems by Samiya Bashir

Gospel, like all good preaching, is both deftly reflective and full of rafter-rattling truths. In a voice stamped with her definitive, soul-drenched signature, Samiya Bashir blesses us with a roadmap for the living of our fractured and uprooted lives, forcing us to take an unflinching look at faith and the way it's defined. This is a grandmama-braiding-the-hair book, a rev-ripping-up-the-pulpit book, a book you'll constantly come back to for both beauty and guidance.
—Patricia Smith, author of Blood Dazzler

Luminous and deeply shadowed, at times gravely playful, and always intimate, Gospel sings through – and beyond -- ancestral and personal terrains simultaneously mysterious and revealed, to achieve a richness that is both exhilarating and sublime. Here are movements that, through rhythm, language, and light, become exactly what the poet envisions: gospel.
—Thomas Glave, author of The Torturer’s Wife

If a volume of poetry can be a page-turner, Gospel is it. An ambitious storyteller, Samiya Bashir has created a four-part volume that grabs you and won't let go. Her poetry is urgent and feverish, mournful, sexy and healing. The only thing better than reading Bashir's words, so luscious and ripe you can taste them, is hearing her perform them.
—Linda Villarosa, author of Passing for Black

Samiya Bashir's Gospel builds a vibrant, ascending hum of wisdom around us, chronicling the life blood at the root of its making. Her poetic vision is limber and sensual, thriving amidst histories, love lessons and traditions at once singular and collective. To say, as she does, "I am not a fool who believes in things which hurt me," is to be lyrically aware of what sustains her, from mythic messengers to the ever-present legacy of queer black family: poets and kin all. It is to know that understanding survival is work and joy; one must invent bold images and sly rhythms to shape that play. This is just the kind of poet Samiya Bashir is: attentive, passionate, artful. With each line, her Gospel urges us to seek a like power in ourselves, and share it.
—Tisa Bryant, author of Unexplained Presence

Samiya is as fine a poet as they come. As the title states Gospel is a song. It is beautifully crafted, touching and wonderful to watch it shake shimmy and move.
—Pamela Sneed, poet, playwright

Official Website: http://www.samiyabashir.com