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Humanities Division
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Associate Professor of Aesthetics & Poetics
Faculty
Regular Faculty
Remote work location
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
fahima ife is an Indigenous experimental poet and associate professor of Aesthetics & Poetics who is fascinated with the interplay of language and literacy. She was born and raised in a working-class family in California’s Inland Empire where she began cultivating the anticolonialist and anticapitalist sensibilities that continue to inform her life, work, and practice, which are all the same thing.
She is the author of Maroon Choreography (Duke University Press, 2021), the chapbook abalone (Albion Books, 2023), Septet for the Luminous Ones (Wesleyan University Press, 2024), and other poems and essays appearing in various places including: The Brooklyn Rail, The Kenyon Review, ASAP/J, Air/Light, California Poets, and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. She writes about intimacy, race, gender, queerness, class, poetry, beauty, nature, myth, possibility, and hope.
Essentially, she is a practitioner of her craft. She practices as a way of life, and loves leaning into the wilderness of creative writing. Her practice is informed by willful cross-polination in numerous disciplinary fields including: Experimental Poetry and Poetics, Aesthetics, Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Disability Studies, Performance Studies, Queer and Trans Studies, Spirituality, Tantra, Experimental Music, Film & Media, Education Studies, Somatics, Ecopoetics, likely others too (let her know), all of which are grounded in robust grandma practices.
Her undergraduate studies in Psychology at Cal State San Bernardino (2001-2005) established a foundation for her ongoing engagement with depth psychology. While working on her Master of Arts in Teaching at Emory University (2009-10), she began cultivating a teaching philosophy grounded in creative inquiry, critical engagement, and the transformative possibilities of education. She taught English Language Arts and History in Atlanta public schools for several years before completing a PhD in Languages, Literacies, and Cultures in the School of Education with a minor in English Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2016. From 2016-2022, she taught as an assistant professor in the English department at Louisiana State University. In 2022, she joined the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department in the Humanities as an associate professor at UCSC.
As part of ongoing service to her fields, she co-founded & co-edits an ongoing small press publishing project, LUCIUS, for experimental poetry and poetics.
Experimental Poetry & Poetics, Aesthetics, Anti-colonialism, Anti-capitalism, Music and Performance, Somatics, Creative Flow States, Breath & Breathing, Intimacy, Sensuality, Ecstasy, Joy, Pleasure, Deep Listening, Languages & Literacies, Ecologies, Nature, Herbalism, Humans & Other Species
My classes provide practical tools to creatively work towards justice, primarily within the arts, poetry, and poetics.
"3 Poems" (California Poets, 2026)
"2 Poems" (Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], 2026)
"Duende, A Vocabulary I Return To" (Winter in America Still anthology, Carbonation Press, 2026)
"Wild Horses, New Mexico 2025" (HERE, 2026)
"from BLUE VIPERS" (mercury firs, 2025)
Septet for the Luminous Ones (Wesleyan University Press, 2024)
"3 poems" selected by Erica Hunt (The Brooklyn Rail, 2024)
"still away" in Bernardo Wade's Afroforrealism Folio (Indiana Review, 2024)
"entheogenic rush" (Transition: An International Review, 2024)
"i am like a radio channel, of my own" (Poetry Daily, 2024)
abalone (Albion Books, 2023)
"alchemical sirens" introduced by Brian Teare (The Kenyon Review, 2023)
"communicado, two sips" (Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, 2023)
"2 poems" (mercury firs, 2022)
"our general banality" curated by Jos Charles (American Academy of Poets, Poem-A-Day, 2022)
"a run // on black study" (Research in the Teaching of English, 2022)
"grief aesthetics" (liquid blackness, 2022)
"i believe in echoes" (ASAP/J, 2021)
Maroon Choreography (Duke University Press, 2021)
"skilled black hands braid geometric insignia as poetry" (Air/Light, 2021)
"2 poems" in issue on Black Aliveness edited by Ronaldo V. Wilson (Interim Poetics, 2020)
Solarities 5: fahima ife, Joseph Donahue, & Nathaniel Mackey (John Hope Franklin Institute at Duke, 2025)
The Poet and the Poem, Grace Cavalieri Presents fahima ife (Library of Congress Podcast, 2024)
Open Mic Night Featuring fahima ife, MoAD (Museum of the African Diaspora, 2022)
Rubber Flower Poetry Hour: Andy Young & fahima ife (The Front, 2022)
*Stefano Harney and Fred Moten: "Felicity Street" (On Tom Dent, fahima ife, and New Orleans) (The Lab SF, 2022)
Ecopoetry Now: Reading and Conversation with Isabel Zapata, fahima ife, Chantal Neveu, and Rita Wong, moderated by Brian Teare (Poetry Daily, 2022)
Symposium-Surrealism Beyond Borders virtual with Lori Cole, Kryzsztof Fijalkowski, Talin Grigor, fahima ife, Mark Polizzotti, moderated by Joan Kee (The Met, 2021)
Maroon Choreography: a poetry reading by fahima ife (in New Orleans for Duke University Press, 2021)
* not my reading, but in conversation with my work
CRES 44: Somatic Poetics
CRES 68: Approaches to Black Studies
CRES 113: Music and Performance
CRES 183: A Black Lyric
CRES 202: Ecopoetics and Ecoaesthetics
CRES 222: Experimental Language Poetry
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