Biography........
Samika Swift lives in Denton, Texas where she emcees Basement
Poetry, a free all-ages open mic that meets on the fourth Wednesday
of each month at Recycled Books. She is also a board member
(Director of Performance Poetry) for the Denton Poets’ Assembly and
a member of the Denton Writers League. Before abandoning the harsh
Indiana winters to devote her life to wordslinging, she served her
wage-slave sentence as an alternative high school teacher, teen
librarian, bartender, event coordinator, coyote uglier performer,
office assistant, grill cook, housekeeper/babysitter, and
dishwasher.
Samika has been composing poetry since she learned to speak. As a
child, she couldn't remember song lyrics, so she made up her own and
sang along to the music. She wrote her first book at age 10, a
masterpiece of poetry, prose, and badly drawn marker art titled
Funny Little Gerbil.
Growing up in a Generous Mothers city surrounded by auto plants and
cornfields, Samika did not learn about performance poetry until her
second year of teaching, when a fellow teacher helped her plan
activities for Samika's Creative Writing class. She and her students
began hosting a monthly open mic for their school. Since then,
Samika has hosted open mics at three more high schools before moving
to Texas to become a full-time writer.
Samika's career also led her to planning events at a public library,
and she immediately proposed a monthly open mic for teens in
addition to the quarterly adult open mic she was already hosting.
With the help of a phenomenal Teen Advisory Board, she created the
first poetry slam in the city.
But wait, folks, that's not all. Samika has sponsored two literary
magazines for high school students, the second a monthly publication
created by students at an alternative high school, the first of its
kind at that particular school. She has created and led a community
based critique group and community writing classes for teens.
Currently, she's completing two YA novels and a poetry chapbook.
Her credits include being a finalist for the 2007 Fort Worth Slam
Team and publication of her poem "Charlie Noble's Key Palace Blues"
in the Austin International Poetry Festival's anthology
di-vêrse’-city. "Charlie Noble's Key Palace Blues" also won
Honorable Mention in the 2007 anthology contest.
Her poem "July" won third place in ByLine Magazine's 2007 summer
poem contest, and her poem "Arizona" won Honorable Mention in ByLine
Magazine's 2007 Nature poem contest.
Denton Public Library selected her essay, "A Worthy Opponent," as a winner in its 2008 Creative Writing Contest. Her poem, "My Son's Father," appears in the 2009 Texas Poetry Calendar (get your copy!).