A one-on-one, face-to-face conversation in poems between SAMIYA BASHIR and CINDY WILLIAMS GUTIÉRREZ. Using intimacy and directness as their modes, Bashir and Gutiérrez mine personal experience to plant themselves and that which they have witnessed in solid ground defined by healing and joy. Both poets will present existing work anew through this live collaboration, which honors the creative process and the discursive impetus at the root of poetry.
SAMIYA BASHIR’s two books of poetry, Gospel and Where the Apple Falls, and two anthologies, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art, and Best Black Women’s Erotica 2, have brought some people joy, according to them. Her poetry has recently appeared in Poetry Magazine, Poet Lore, World Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cascadia Review, Eleven Eleven, The Encyclopedia Project, The Rumpus, here, there and around. She teaches creative writing at Reed College, where she also runs The Poetry Salon and organizes a delicious Visiting Writers Series. Samiya has a magic cat who shares her obsession with trees, blackbirds, and hobo signs.
Poet-dramatist CINDY WILLIAMS GUTIÉRREZ draws inspiration from the silent and silenced voices of history and herstory. She was selected by Poets & Writers Magazine as a top 2014 Debut Poet for her poetry collection, the small of claim of bones, published by Arizona State University’s Bilingual Press. Her poems and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including Borderlands, Calyx, Harvard’s Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s (UNAM’s) Periódico de poesía, Portland Review, Quiddity, Rain Taxi, Rattle, and ZYZZYVA. Recently produced plays include Words That Burn: A Dramatization of World War II Experiences of William Stafford, Lawson Inada, and Guy Gabaldón, featured in Milagro’s 2014 La Luna Nueva festival, and A Dialogue of Flower & Song, featured in the 2012 GEMELA (Spanish and Latin American Women’s Studies—pre-1800) Conference co-sponsored by the University of Portland and Portland State University.
Cindy earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program with concentrations in Mesoamerican poetics and creative collaboration. A passionate educator, she has taught poetry to adults through Literary Arts’ Delve Seminars, the Attic, and Annie Bloom’s Books, as well as to K-12 youth through the Portland Art Museum, The Right Brain Initiative, and Writers in the Schools. Cindy is a founding member of Los Porteños, Portland’s Latino writers’ collective, and the founder of Grupo de ’08, a Northwest collaborative-artists’ salon inspired by Lorca’s Generación de ’27. She lives in the hinterlands of Oregon City with her husband who paints landscapes.
FREE and open to the public!
More
Less
