Last summer, Samiya Bashir and I sat down to talk about making a video for her book of poetry FIELD THEORIES (Nightboat Books, 2017). One video became six: one per month until the book's release. We worked with the incomparable movement artist keyon gaskin who appears in all six videos, and many generous people participated in Field Theories #4. The six videos will be woven together into one continuous film for the month of March.
I'm honored and proud to share Field Theories #6 (February):
"You know how the universe blinks."
|| movement by keyon gaskin + filmed with Roland Dahwen Wu & Patua Films ||
Field Theories wends its way through quantum mechanics to chicken wings and Newports, love and a shoulder’s chill, melding blackbody theory (idealized perfect absorption, as opposed to the whitebody’s idealized reflection) with real live Black bodies. Albert Murray said, “the second law of thermodynamics ain’t nothing but the blues.” So what is the blue of how we treat each other, ourselves, of what this world does to us, of what we do to this shared world? Woven through experimental lyrics is a heroic crown of sonnets that wonders about love and intent, identity and hybridity, and how we embody these interstices and for what reasons and to what ends.
These poems span lyric, narrative, dramatic, and multi-media experience, engaging their containers while pushing against their constraints.
FIELD THEORIES, by Samiya Bashir
Nightboat Books || 2.1.2017
Samiya Bashir’s previous books, including Gospel, Where the Apple Falls, and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art, exist. She makes poems of dirt, zeros & ones, text & light. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
samiyabashir.com