Alumna Jai Hamid Bashir '20 Wins Zócalo Public Square Poetry Contest

Recent alumna Jai Hamid Bashir '20 is the winner of the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize, a prestigious award given to a poem that best evokes a connection to place in the US. In Bashir’s winning poem, “Little Bones,” “a girl considers a Utah Sunset, intoxicated on 'untold plans for eternity.’”

According to Zócalo Public Square, “This year’s winning poem, selected by the Zócalo editorial staff, won us over because of the way the poet’s distinctive voice guides us through the familiar scenery of the Southwestern US. The poem is a celebration of a person’s girlhood, and how it is shaped by such forces as family, religion, heritage, and location.”

“Bashir’s work is beautiful, particularly in negotiating dichotomies—inner and external experiences, languages and landscapes, and feelings versus walking around in the world as a person,” said Zócalo poetry editor, Colette LaBouff.

In an interview with Zócalo as their poetry contest winner, Bashir said, “Something I've wanted to do in my poetry is to talk about my diaspora identity, while also being very explicit with the fact that I am still very American; and I actually have a lot more shared experiences than unshared experiences with a lot of other Americans, regardless of race. And so this poem came out of that.”

“Little Bones” is available to read here.

Bashir also recently published four poems in Issue 2.3 of the literary journal What are Birds?. Her poems “The Eternal Present,” “Birds of Prey,” “Ark/ Dove,” and “And Morning in Electric Surrender” can be found here. Five of her poems also appeared earlier this year in The American Poetry Review; “Feral, Untold Grace” is available to read below, courtesy of The American Poetry Review

Born to Pakistani-American immigrant artists, Bashir was raised in the American West. She is the daughter of loomsmith, rug designer and master weaver, Hamid Bashir. The recipient of the Linda Corrente Memorial Prize at Columbia University and an Academy of American Poets University Prize, she recently was the writer-in-residence with HesseFlatow in Amagansett, New York.

Feral, Untold Grace

by Jai Hamid Bashir

Vultures clean the coast,
          what we couldn’t sing underwater,
we brought back in the throat
          of our afternoon. The shore shaped
by the constant carol of waves,
          like a mammal’s heart. Beached,
the baby Great White, a belly
          gray as a singing knife,
kisses each of her hissing fins
          to the sand. Recovering some altitude,
flashing her wings of cheek. Worn out
          eyes gelled with kindness.
Hurt as a cavity, stalactites
          of her teeth, some still moonset,
let out their dark light:
          I’ve done enough, it is over.
Cupping my hands
          in the geometry of a prayer,
a bedouin by by a desert spring,
          holding all of the ocean I can
to wet her breath as you find
          a bucket abandoned by a fallen castle.
You get behind and carve the sand, too.
          The back fin fanning, your feet
coiled with the same energy
          as a birth. The waves open
and the mossy slip of her tucks
          bravely into your arms, the only way
I know you know how to hold.
          Fins start to coast into
swim and she bursts into
          a glide: so common and sweet as air.