Black Poets: Warsan Shire.

…his teeth ache with the memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frahtened int saway chat you want him he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head…

Warsan Shire is a thirty-six-year-old Somali-British poet named the first Young Poet Laureate for London in 2013; she is the youngest Royal Society of Literature (RSL) member. 

She has credited her Somali heritage as contributing immensely to her use of language and the themes she explores in her writing. The Somali people have been seafarers for millennia, and Somalia itself has been in civil war since the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991. 

Since her critically acclaimed and hugely successful 2011 chapbook, “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth”, Warsan has established herself within a new generation of globally recognised female writers making a real impact with her words. In her poetry, the depth of human feeling is evoked through imagery that is as gripping as it is urgent. 

In 2016, American pop star Beyoncé collaborated with Warsan Shire on the singer’s visual album, Lemonade. This catapulted her work further into the limelight. Warsan Shire was also credited with film adaptation and poetry on the project. 

It is convenient for many to believe that every writer who writes about pain or trauma must have experienced it in some way. Shire responds to this in an interview: “You can write about garden gnomes, or you can write about the divorce you just went through. It depends on what poetry is for you… But regardless of what kind of work you do, you will still always be pigeonholed into something because it makes other people feel comfortable. I mean, if it wasn’t ‘so brave’, it would be (being) ‘so African’ or ‘so Muslim’, and although these titles are part of who I am, why would I write to that?”

She published a second chapbook, “Her Blue Body”, in 2015.Her debut full-length collection, “Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head”, was published in 2022. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

For Women Who Are Difficult To Love By Warsan Shire

you are a horse running alone and he tries to tame you compares you to an impossible highway to a burning house says you are blinding him that he could never leave you forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable every woman before or after you is doused in your name you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with the memory of taste his body just a long shadow seeking yours but you are always too intense frahtened int saway chat you want him he tells you that no man can live up to the one who lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you? closed your mouth more tried to be softer prettier
ess volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel simhaeling away fron dolin his dreams split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that and if he wants to leave then let him leave and stetere and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.
Keyu Usani
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A proficient article writer, research analyst and copy editor. I have loved books for as long as I can remember. From the smell of books just out of their wraps to the feel when I run my fingertips down the spine, the fonts and sizes, the various ways cover and internal elements are arranged as much as the places books take me to and the people I meet within those pages. Archiving poetry is a special passion.