Tarik Dobbs
​

Basic English I
​

Basic English II
​

Basic English III

These poems are comprised of documents from the Henry Ford Sociological Department and Ford English school worksheets, which ran in the early 1900s. Often, migrant Ford employees from the southern world were forced to undergo assimilation and ethnic erasure as part of their English school/Ford employment experience. 
​

*Visit text version of poems here


Tarik Dobbs is an Arab American queer writer & artist born in Dearborn, Michigan. Their visual poems appear in American Poetry Review, Best of the Net, & Poetry Magazine. Dobbs is Assistant Editor of Great River Review and helps out at Poetry.onl. Dobbs’s poetry chapbook, Dancing on the Tarmac, was selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Yemassee, 2021).   


​
​
Return to September 2021 Edition