The RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU

02/04/2025

In celebration of Black History Month, we have selected Nikki Giovanni's "BLK History Month" as our Poem of the Week.

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BLK History Month
by Nikki Giovanni

If Black History Month is not
viable then wind does not
carry the seeds and drop them
on fertile ground
rain does not
dampen the land
and encourage the seeds
to root
sun does not
warm the earth
and kiss the seedlings
and tell them plain:
You’re As Good As Anybody Else
You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

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Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She graduated with a degree in history from Fisk University. A world-renowned poet and one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement, her notable books of poetry are Black Judgment (1968) and Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983), which were influenced by her participation in the Black Arts Movement and Black Power movement in the 1960s.

Art, slide 1 by Jacob Lawrence: The Library. 1960. Tempera on fiberboard, 24 x 29 7/8 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., Object No. 1969.47.24.

02/04/2025

MSU Undergraduate Writers!

Got ?

We are thrilled to announce that submissions for the Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry are now open!

Established in 2011, the Balocating Prize awards $500 to an MSU undergraduate student in any major for a single poem. This year’s final judge is Airea D. Matthews, who will announce her selection at the beginning of her reading on the evening of April 2, 2025, in the RCAH Theater.

Full guidelines available here: https://poetry.rcah.msu.edu/Student-contests/Balocating-prize/guidelines.html

Text, slide 1: RCAH Center for Poetry
Call for Entries: 14th Annual Balocating Undergraduate Prize for Poetry
Guidelines: Open to MSU undergraduates in any major; Prize of $500 for a single poem; Submit up to 3 poems; Winner to be announced April 2 at Airea D. Matthews' reading, 7 p.m., RCAH Theater.
Deadline for entry: 11:59 p.m. Fri., Feb. 28.
Final Judge: Airea D. Matthews, author of SIMULACRA, winner of 2015 yale Younger Poets Award, and BREAD AND CIRCUS, winner of the 2024 LA Times Book Prize in Poetry; winner of Guggenheim, Pew, Academy of American Poets, and Kresge Arts in Detroit fellowships.

Text, slide 2: Guidelines, plus
Annie Balocating (1979-2018) was an MSU/Residential Option in Arts and Letters (ROIAL) alumna, where she was an avid poet and active in community efforts to assist refugees of Sudan. She went on to co-found the Rwanda Research Group and her M.A. thesis on Rwandan genocide memorials and collective remembrance was nominated for the 2009 Hunter College Shuster Award for Outstanding Thesis. The Balocating Prize for Undergraduate Poetry was established in her name in 2011.

01/27/2025

Our poem of the week is Emily Bronte’s “Spellbound,” which is reminiscent of the winter months. We hope everyone is getting through these cold days!

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Spellbound
by Emily Bronte

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

~~~

Emily Jane Brontë (30 July 1818
- 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature.

01/21/2025

Tonight at The Robin Theatre!

Here's something real and beautiful. Tuesday evening (tomorrow), join us for an evening of readings on the theme of "Exile". Featuring Shastri Akella, Samiya Bashir, and Aisha Sabatini Sloan. Co-produced with MSU RCAH Poetry Center and WRAC, with special thanks to Michael Copperman. FREE, donations welcome ❤

01/21/2025

We had an amazing time at the opening reception for "These Are For You, I Hope This Helps" last night in the RCAH LookOut Art Gallery with visiting artists Darryl DeAngelo Terrell and Samiya Bashir!

We hope you'll join us Wednesday evening for Samiya Bashir's final appearance here at MSU, at 7 p.m. in the RCAH Theater, Snyder Phillips Hall.

Vast gratitude to Matthew Dae Smith for these stunning photos.

01/20/2025

Today is the Day! Join us in the RCAH LookOut Art Gallery for an opening reception tonight! Meet photographer Darryl DeAngelo Terrell and poet Samiya Bashir and experience how their work speaks together and individually.

Come celebrate with us!

About the Artists:
Darryl DeAngelo Terrell (B. 1991), Is a Brooklyn Based, Detroit Born Artist primarily working within lens-based media, performance, and writing; they’re also a Curator, DJ, and Organizer. Darryl received their Bachelor of Fine Art from Wayne State University in 2015 and their MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Darryl works under the philosophy of F.U.B.U (This S**t Is For Us*). They’re always thinking about how their work can aid a larger conversation about blackness and its many intersections. Currently, Darryl is working across two bodies of work; one work is currently exploring afro-surrealism, thinking of how to get all black people free from the presence of whiteness, getting black people to “elsewhere” where the black diaspora can have complete freedom. Darryl is also exploring queerness and desire by way of a fat black femme non-binary alter-ego named Dion. Both bodies are flushed out through photography, video, activations, sound, and writing.
Darryl is a 2022 Fire Island Artist in Resident, 2022 Lighthouse Work Fellow, 2021 Black Rock Senegal Artist in Resident, 2021 The Black Embodiment Studio Arts Writing Resident, 2020/2021 Red Bull House of Art Resident, 2019/2020 Document Detroit Fellow, 2019 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow in Visual Arts. Terrell has exhibited and/or Performed at Dakar, Senegal, for the Dak'Art, La Biennale, The Art Institute of Chicago, Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, Cranbrook Museum of Arts, The Trout Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
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Samiya Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Award’s Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.
Her fourth collection, I Hope this Helps, is forthcoming Spring 2025 from Nightboat Books.
She currently serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and lives in Harlem.

01/19/2025

The Samiya Bashir magic continues today with a poetry workshop at noon at CADL Downtown Lansing! Didn't register? Come anyway!
Check https://poetry.rcah.msu.edu/events/bashir-residency.html for details on all of her events, today, tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday!
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*Sun., Jan. 19, 12:00-1:30 p.m., Capital Area District Library (CADL) Downtown Branch, 401 S. Capitol Ave., Lansing
Poetry for the People Poetry Workshop
In 1991, June Jordan established the Poetry for the People Workshop in the African American Studies Department at UC-Berkeley. It was accessible and welcoming to writers at all levels, and, at the close of each semester, students produced an anthology of poetry and showcased their work at community and on-campus public poetry readings. Although Jordan died in 2002, PFTP is alive and well at Berkeley and at numerous colleges and universities across the country. Samiya Bashir, an alum of the program under June Jordan, will lead this generative poetry workshop and share its model to empower local poets to establish their own.

* Mon., Jan. 20, 6:00-7:30 p.m., .lookout Lookout Gallery, Snyder-Phillips Hall 361 Physics Rd., MSU Campus
Opening reception, Emerging Visions, featuring I Hope This Helps by Samiya Bashir, and photography by Darryl DeAngelo Terrell

* Tuesday, January 21, 7:00 p.m., The Robin Theatre, 1101 S. Washington Ave., Lansing
Authors On Exile: A Conversation with Shastri Akella, Samiya Bashir, and Aisha Sabatini Sloan, curated by 🙏

* Wed., Jan. 22, 7:00 p.m., RCAH Theater, Snyder-Phillips Hall, 361 Physics Rd., MSU Campus
I Hope This Helps: Samiya Bashir Reading/Presentation
Reception/Book signing to follow in LookOut Gallery, Snyder-Phillips Hall

Send a message to learn more

01/13/2025

Samiya Bashir ( ) is coming to MSU! From January 17-22, she will be presenting her work at RCAH LookOut Art Gallery, in a performance on Jan. 22 at the RCAH Theater, and at other locations around Lansing! Check the LinkTree in our bio for more information!
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This video was edited with content from Samiya Bashir’s YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/?si=hAegqpgo1m1-8w9g . The original video is titled “FIELD THEORIES — four” and includes excerpts from Bashir’s poem “At Harlem Hospital across the street from the Schomburg the only thing to eat is a Big Mac." This is only for use of advertising, and we do not own the poem or the original video itself.

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01/13/2025

In anticipation of Samiya Bashir's upcoming residency at MSU Residential College in the Arts and Humanities we've selected her poem "Blackbody curve" from her collection "Field Theories." Check https://poetry.rcah.msu.edu/events/bashir-residency.html for all the opportunities to meet her, Jan. 17-22!
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Blackbody curve

Stairs: a rushed flight down thirty-eight; French doors unlocked always.
Always: a lie; an argument.
Argument: two buck hunters circle a meadow’s edge.
Edge: one of us outside bleeding.
Bleeding: shards of glass; doors locked.
Locked: carpet awash with blood.
Blood: lift and drop; a sudden breeze.
Breeze: its whistle though bone.
Bone: the other was looking at —
Bone: cradle to catch drips.
Drips: quiet as a meadow fawn.
Fawn: faces down each hunter each gun.
Gun: again.
Again: somebody call someone.
Someone: almost always prefers forgetting.
Forgetting: an argument; a lie.
Lie: a meadow; a casement; a stair.
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Samiya Bashir, called a "dynamic, shape-shifting machine of perpetual motion," by Diego Bez, writing for Booklist, is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poetry maker whose work, both solo and collaborative, has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma'd from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome and across the United States.
Sometimes she makes poems of dirt.
Sometimes zeros and ones. Sometimes variously rendered text. Sometimes light.
Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Award's Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry.
Her fourth collection, "I Hope this Helps," is forthcoming Spring 2025 from Nightboat Books.

12/20/2024

This week, we thought this favorite poem of the week deserved a repeat appearance. With wishes for peace and joy to you and yours this holiday season and in the new year, the RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU.

At Winter Solstice
by Colleen Anderson

My lawn is deep in brittle maple leaves
huddled against the house, each curving spine
outlined with frost. My neighbor’s holly tree,
old keeper of cardinals, old tower of green,
is standing watch, grandfatherly, in this
season of giving thanks and going home.
Come close: we need each other more, the less
directly we’re regarded by the sun,
and the long night is on us now. Come
close as you can, my friend, and let us share
the stories we were saving for this time,
and take the measure of another year.
Come close, and let us watch the morning in:
the hour of turning to the light again.

Colleen Anderson is a writer, designer, and founder of Mother Wit Writing and Design. Her stories and poems have appeared in the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project, Redbook, Embers, Kestrel, Arts & Letters, Antietam Review, Passager, Carolina Quarterly, The Sun, and many other periodicals. Her songs have been featured on Public Radio International's Mountain Stage and The Folk Sampler, she has produced three albums of original songs, Fabulous Realities (1991) and Going Over Home (2001). Her writing has earned two Individual Artist Fellowships from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, as well as residency fellowships from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico and Monson Arts in Monson, Maine. She is the author of three books: Bound Stone (2016, Finishing Line Press), Missing: Mrs. Cornblossom (Winner of the 2012 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Bronze Medal for Best First Book – Chapter Book), and Trumprosidy: Light Verse for Dark Times (2020). She lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

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12/16/2024

Exciting news from the Center for Poetry - https://mailchi.mp/ccf75257e117/exciting-news-from-the-center-for-poetry

12/10/2024

RIP Nikki Giovanni. What a legacy.

The poet and activist was a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni was working on her upcoming book of poetry, set to publish in the fall.