Warsan Shire is a Somali British writer and poet born in Nairobi and raised in London. She has written two chapbooks, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Her Blue Body. She was awarded the inaugural Brunel International African Poetry Prize and served as the first Young Poet Laureate of London. She is the youngest member of the Royal Society of Literature and is included in the Penguin Modern Poets series. Shire wrote the poetry for the Peabody Award–winning visual album Lemonade and the Disney film Black Is King in collaboration with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. She also wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising, highlighting the voices and faces of Somali girls in Africa’s largest refugee camp. Warsan Shire lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her full-length debut poetry collection.
“To say Warsan Shire's first full-length poetry collection is
‘highly anticipated’ is an understatement. . . . Consider Bless the
Daughter essential reading.”—The Week
“The British-Somali poet is charting a new course with her first
full-length poetry collection . . . which weaves together the
themes of migration, womanhood, Black identity, and
intergenerational collection that Shire is so singularly gifted at
exploring. Shire frequently draws on her own life to create
her art, and the end result is a collection of poems that will
shine as a beacon for marginalized communities
everywhere (and, perhaps, inspire those who have always taken
their own belonging for granted to think beyond the confines of
their individual experience).”—Vogue
“This is a collection that merits slow and careful
reading.”—BuzzFeed
“In her first full-length collection of poetry, the
Somali-British writer forges her own path, with meditations on
migration, femininity, trauma and resilience.”—Esquire
“Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head tackles many of
the same themes as her previous work, with the same striking
verse we’ve come to expect from her.”—Bustle
“Shire’s strikingly beautiful imagery leverages the specificity of
her own womanhood, love life, tussles with mental health, grief,
family history, and stories from the Somali diaspora, to make them
reverberate universally. . . . By dint of all those blessings and
Shire’s sensitivity, the poetry in Bless the Daughter soothes,
even while it picks at the scabs of the wounds that cause trauma.
Ultimately, the book feels like Shire is performing a
benediction, laying trauma’s ghosts to rest.”—The Telegraph
“This full-length collection . . . depicts a journey to womanhood
intermixed with pop culture and news references. Shire’s body
of work has always impressed me with its triumph of visceral,
biting imagery. . . . Shire’s poetry flows with power like the
earth splitting wide open.”—Literary Hub
“The commanding debut from Shire captures the loneliness of
migration in crystalline language punctuated by the menace of
patriarchal violence. . . . Shire’s assured voice teems with
righteous fury, tempered by rich language to create a memorable and
powerful book.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“It is not overstatement to say Shire writes the way Nina Simone
sang. All the brilliance of her lean, monumental Teaching My Mother
How to Give Birth is magnified in this remarkable new
book.”—Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and
Future Assassin
“Beauty is maddeningly elusive, but it does exist. It’s here in
these lines, bursting brilliant, reshaping the story.”—Patricia
Smith, author of Incendiary Art
“Warsan Shire’s exquisite, memorable, and finely tuned poems
articulate a depth of experience that never fails to surprise and
profoundly move me, as she so powerfully gives voice to the
unspoken.”—Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other
“Heartbreaking, full-bodied, and luscious . . . If someone from
another planet wanted to know what it was like for a woman to
survive on earth, they should read this book!”—Pascale Petit,
author of Tiger Girl
“This fierce and compelling book of poems should come with a
warning label: These poems will break your heart.”—Julia Alvarez,
author of In the Time of the Butterflies and Afterlife
“Warsan Shire is an expert sculptor. She molds words into clay, her
poems into statues—each one a wonder that I return to, in
reverence.”—Vivek Shraya, author of I’m Afraid of Men and even this
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