OSF Hip-Hop Poetry Open Mic Night to Feature Poet Samiya Bashir, 4/7

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) will host its next Hip-Hop Poetry Open Mic night April 7, with featured poet Samiya Bashir. The Hip-Hop Poetry Open Mic event is free and open to the public and will take place from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Black Swan on the OSF campus (15 S. Pioneer St., Ashland, OR 97520). Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.; space is limited.

In addition to opening the stage for the community to share their talents via all styles of poetry, music, dance, and theatre, each Hip-Hop Poetry Open Mic night highlights a different featured artist: the Q Brothers opened the season on March 10 and Los Porteños will headline the May 5 event.

Samiya Bashir's second book of poems, Gospel, was a finalist for both the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and, along with her first collection, Where the Apple Falls, the Lambda Literary Award. Her work has been widely published, including in Poetry, Poet Lore, World Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, Cura, The Rumpus, Hubbub, and The Encyclopedia Project, and more. An Ann Arbor, Michigan, native and recent NEA Writer-in-Residence at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Samiya teaches creative writing at Reed College.

These events are open to the community and provide an opportunity for anyone to work on original material in front of live and deeply supportive audiences. OSF has been producing poetry slams and open mics since 2007.

Photo by Sophia Wallace