![]() Her lines No one leaves home/unless home is the mouth of a shark are now being used to describe the war in Ukraine, a horrific crisis which has nonetheless highlighted the differences in how some refugees are viewed compared to others. One of the most enduring examples of her work is Home – a blisteringly impactful poem about the refugee experience. “I think it’s because I was raised constantly being told it could be so much worse – look at your cousin back home in Somalia who has nothing.” “I always look at the pain of others,” she says. The poems in her debut collection Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head (out now) have narrators who are both personal and vague, everyone and no one. Who else is going through a difficult time?’” She utilises poetry not only as a way of navigating her own trauma, but that of others. My whole way of making sense of life is, ‘So I’m going through a difficult time. Like Baldwin, she voices the Black experience. ![]() It’s a fitting sartorial choice, Baldwin being a man whose art is, in many ways, a precursor to that of 33-year-old Shire – the child of Somalian refugees, raised in Harlesden, North-West London and now residing in LA with her husband and two young children. “Even thinking about it, I get the biggest endorphin rush,” Shire says with a laugh, crossing her legs beneath her and tugging at the hem of her T-shirt, which has the face of James Baldwin emblazoned across it. She is fascinated by serial killers – particularly female ones – and is almost sexually attracted to glitter. She used to write her poems in the IKEA in Neasden, North-West London. And there are the things you may not know. She famously collaborated with Beyoncé on her award-winning visual album Lemonade, and lent her words to her film Black Is King. She was the first Young Poet Laureate for London, and the inaugural winner of the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. There are many things you may already know about British-Somali poet Warsan Shire.
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