![]() ![]() The other most powerful poem in the book, also about refugees, is "Home," which notes, "No one leaves home unless home is/ the mouth of a shark." "No one puts their children in a boat/ unless the water is safer than the land." and "The insults are easier to swallow than/ finding your child's body in the rubble." unable to erase the refugee from our hearts." "At each and every checkpoint, the refugee is asked/ are you human?" In "Assimilation," she writes lines that slayed me: "We never unpacked, / dreaming in the wrong language, / carrying our mother's fears in our feet. Everything you did to me,/ I remember.// Mama, I made it out of your home/ alive, raised by the voices/ in my head." ![]() Are you there, God it's me, the ugly one.") She then blesses herself, recalling her "scalp massaged with the milk/ of cruelty, cranium cursed/ crushed between adult knees,/ drenched in pink lotion. In it, a baby girl is "the patron saint of not good enough," and Shire includes lots of American cultural references ("At first I was afraid, I was petrified. The first poem in the collection, "Extreme Girlhood," makes a reference to the book's title and is one of the best. Here are some lines that had a deep impact on me: Even without the glossary, though, most things are clear from context. There's a glossary in the back of the book, which is good to know before you start reading so you can look up unfamiliar (Islamic) words as you come across them in the poems. She also reflects on the treatment of refugees, on child sexual abuse, on white privilege, and on the loss of her father and some dear friends. This leaves Shire able to reflect back on her mother's suffering with compassion while still wishing things had been different. In this, her first full-length collection, Shire reflects on how her mother failed her while making clear she knows her mother's suffering forged her into who she became. But Beyonce and Disney aside, Warsan Shire is a fantastic poet in her own right, the first young Poet Laureate of London, and she has written an exquisitely wrenching collection. I encourage everyone to read this moving, powerful debut collection from an Islamic-British Black woman who got some notoriety because she worked with Beyonce on her album Lemonade and with Disney on Black is King. My Father the Astronaut: "If the Moon was Europe, my father was an astronaut who died on his way to the moon."Ä«ackwards: "I'll rewrite this whole life and this time there'll be so much love you won't be able to see beyond it." Home: "No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark." ![]() She is able to carry and retain her identity in a forever foreign land. Her prose is achingly sad and strong with memory. "Love is not haram but after years of fucking women who are unable to pronounce your name you find yourself totally alone." (Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle). Her poems cover the immigrant experience, love loss, abuse and feeling alien wherever you go. A work of hardship and growth, Warson Shire's new book is called Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head. She was named the first Young Poet Laureate of London at age 25 and the youngest ever fellow in the UK Royal Society of Literature. Warson Shire's poetry was one of the main inspirations for Beyonce's groundbreaking album Lemonade. ![]()
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