Poets Samiya Bashir and Funto Omojola will read from their work, then join in conversation, on the occasion of Nightboat Books publishing If I Gather Here and Shout, a “deft, musical debut poetry collection about the disabling effects of illness, rupture, and inheritance—informed both by Yoruba divinatory systems and violent Western medical understandings of the Black body.” Just out on Novmber 11th.
A reception will follow.
Samiya Bashir is a multi-media poet, writer, librettist, and artist whose solo and collaborative work has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, exhibited, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome, and across the United States. Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her fourth collection, I Hope This Helps, is forthcoming in Spring 2025. Bashir lives in Harlem, NYC.
Funto Omojola is a Nigerian-American poet and artist based in New York State. They’ve received fellowships from MacDowell, the Cave Canem Foundation, Millay Arts, and the Poetry Project, among others and their work has appeared in the Boston Review, Pigeon Pages, Ghost Proposal, and elsewhere. If I Gather Here and Shout is their first book.