![]() Poems of women using pigeon blood on their wedding night to appear ‘ chaste’, to ‘ protecting body and home / from intruders.’ Dangers are everywhere, such as in a traffic stop where young people are compared to ‘ an animal standing on hind legs / pretending to understand why it must die.’ Shire addresses the agency over one’s own body in multiple ways throughout the collection, from skin and voice marking one as an Other, to the gaze of men in a patriarchal society. I can’t attest to the validity but I’ve heard it said that you should translate into the language in which you dream, and this passage brought me the thought of translating oneself into a new country, as well as a person’s hopes and dreams being reconfigured because of the passage to a new country. They speak and dream in the wrong languageĪ moving passage with a dynamic approach to separation and migration with images of birds as well as a barrier even in dreams. Obviously, you want your work to be used in any way to raise funds for all suffering people, but I want people to know who I wrote that about.' So, at the wishes of the author, please keep this in mind when reading the poem.ĭreaming recurs throughout the collection, such as the conclusion to Saint Hooyo (Hooyoo meaning mother as explained in the glossary of Somali terms at the end of the collection): The poem has been used and gone viral during many refugee situations, and she has said in interviews ' I wrote those words for Black immigrants, and the most I’ve ever seen those words used was when the immigrants and refugees were lighter-skinned with lighter eyes. While it slept, there may have been a change in classification.’Īnother aspect of the poem Shire has frequently wanted to highlight is that she writes about Black refugees. The refugee is sure it’s still human but worries that overnight, ‘ I can’t get the refugee out of my body,’ she writes in Assimilation, a poem of either sleepless nights or ‘ dreaming in the wrong language.’ Always ready with a well earned stunner of an ending she warns:ĭie within the first six months in a host country.Īt each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked So much is contained in this passage and these words resonate throughout the collection, addressing themes of being Othered in a new place while feeling your past disintegrating. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory…’ My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. The line breaks mostly removed to read as prose poetry, Shire revists the poem to discuss the trauma that comes after leaving home and finding yourself lost in a new place. Speaking of the poem Home, it reappears in this collection newly revised and with a part 2 accompanying the already harrowing words. With arresting poetic language and visceral imagery, Shire’s long awaited collection will break your heart over and over agains as she addresses themes or migration, womanhood, familial relations fractured across the globe, and while trauma permeates the pages so does hope and the will to survive. But Warsan Shire is much more than a viral poem, and with Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head, the 33 year old poets first full-length collection, she shows she has a multitude of words that will all make us better for having heard them. Over the past few years you’ve likely encountered the poem Home by Somali British writer Warsan Shire, a heartbreaking poem about refugees that begins with ‘ no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark / you only run for the border / when you see the whole city running as well.’ The poem implores empathy and understanding, and the tragedy is how many times the poem has circulated the internet because Shire’s words are the words needed at that moment of the news cycle. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. ![]() ![]() This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. Drawing from her own life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women, and teenage girls. With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way towards womanhood. Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire. ![]()
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