Tribute to Yusef Komunyakaa with Samiya Bashir and Gregory Pardlo

Award-winning poetry by established and emerging poets throughout the summer.

Bryant Park is proud to pay tribute to American poet and Pulitzer Prizer-winner, Yusef Komunyakaa.

Samiya Bashir, called a “dynamic, shape-shifting machine of perpetual motion,” by Diego Báez, is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poet whose solo and collaborative work 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. Bashir is the author of four poetry collections, including Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her latest, I Hope This Helps, called her “magnum opus” by Jericho Brown, was released this Spring from Nightboat Books. Samiya’s honors include the Rome Prize in Literature, Pushcart Prize, New York Council for the Arts, and Oregon’s Regional Arts & Culture Council fellowships, among numerous other awards, grants, and residencies. A sought-after editor, Bashir serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. She lives in Harlem, NYC.

Gregory Pardlo is the author of Spectral Evidence, which was a Finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Prize and the National Book Award. His other books include Digest, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Totem, and Air Traffic. His honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is Program Head of Literature and Creative Writing at NYU Abu Dhabi.