Warsan Shire

"Literary pointillism on a funked-out canvas."

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

"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. 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. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl"--

Poems

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

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. “The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger Mama, I made it/out of your home/alive, raised by the/voices in my head. 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. Drawing from her own life, 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. In Shire's hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life: full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life: full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life: full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.

Through her role as London's first Young Poet Laureate, Warsan Shire turned her eye to the city, interrogating the capital and its continuing transformation, even while lending voice to its oft unheard or under-represented communities and spaces. Collecting work authored during Shire's tenure, 'Her Blue Body' stands as testament and witness, negotiating the complexities of heritage, cultural sensitivity, sensuality, trauma and womanhood, framed and ordered by a sequence of memorial poems, focused through the lens of Shire's intimate and unflinching vision.

Her Blue Body

Sharon Olds

Malika Booker

The latest volume in Penguin Modern Poets series - moving and unflinchingly honest poems from three different cultures about experiences of the female body, the family, sexual politics and conflict Your Family, Your Body features the work of Malika Booker, the Guyanese-British writer and performer behind London- and Chicago-based collective Malika's Kitchen; the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sharon Olds, one of America's most brilliant, beloved and candid voices; and Warsan Shire, the award-winning poet and first ever Young Poetry Laureate of London who also lent her words to Beyonc�'s visual album Lemonade. Inspired by Penguin's enormously successful '60s series of the same name, the Penguin Modern Poets are succinct, collectible, lovingly-assembled guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry, from the UK, America and beyond. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the seasoned poetry fan and the curious reader alike to encounter our most exciting new voices.

Your Family, Your Body

Penguin Modern Poets 3

Warsan vs Melancholy

Our Men Do Not Belong To Us

'Niemand verlaat zijn thuis, tenzij thuis de mond van een haai is.' Met onder andere deze woorden raakte de jonge Somalisch Britse dichter Warsan Shire in 2015 een gevoelige snaar te midden van de Europese vluchtelingencrisis. Haar gedicht 'Thuis' werd wereldwijd gedeeld als oproep tot een humaner beleid en maakte Shire in een klap beroemd. Shire dicht over haar eigen ervaringen als migrant, over je huis kwijtraken en je nergens thuisvoelen, over oorlog, seks en vrouw-zijn. Zegen de dochter gaat over een meisje dat opgevoed wordt door de stemmen in haar hoofd bij gebrek aan iemand die voor haar zorgt. Puttend uit haar eigen leven en dat van haar dierbaren, popcultuur en krantenkoppen brengt Shire in deze schitterende gedichten de levens van vluchtelingen en migranten, moeders en dochters, zwarte vrouwen en tienermeisjes tot leven. Het is een luidruchtig leven: vol muziek, gehuil, soera's, sirenes en vogels. Het is een geurig leven: vol bloed, parfum, shisha-damp, jasmijn en wierook. Het is een kleurrijk leven: vol henna, maanlicht, lippenstift, kurkuma en kohl. Zegen de dochter is een bezwerende viering van veerkracht en overlevingsdrift. Een langverwachte debuutbundel die zal verschijnen in vertaling van niemand minder dan Radna Fabias en die geen lezer onberoerd zal laten. Warsan Shire (1988) werd geboren in Kenia als kind van Somalische ouders en migreerde op eenjarige leeftijd naar Engeland. Haar gedichten over migratie, ergens thuis zijn en een thuis zoeken, publiceerde ze online en maakten grote indruk: op haar blog en Twitter had Shire algauw tienduizenden volgers van over de hele wereld. Ze werd de allereerste Young People's Poet Laureate van Londen, ontving de African Poetry Prize en werd als jongste persoon ooit benoemd tot fellow van de Royal Society of Literature. Ze publiceerde verschillende poëziepamfletten en werd vertaald naar het Italiaans, Spaans en Portugees. In 2016 schreef ze mee aan Beyoncé's album Lemonade en bereikte nog eens miljoenen nieuwe fans. Nu is daar eindelijk haar debuutbundel Zegen de dochter. Radna Fabias (1983) is geboren en getogen op Curaçao. Ze studeerde af op de hku en maakte haar debuut als dichter met Habitus, waar ze de C. Buddingh'-prijs, de Awater Poëzieprijs, de Herman de Coninckprijs en de Grote Poëzieprijs mee won. Ze werd door de Volkskrant uitgeroepen tot het literair talent van 2019. Habitus is in het Frans, Spaans, Arabisch en Duits vertaald; zelf vertaalde ze de Nobelprijs-winnende dichter Louise Glück. Bron: Flaptekst, uitgeversinformatie

Zegen de dochter

Ao mesclar referências ao universo pop e reflexões sobre cultura, religião, diáspora e identidade, os poemas de Warsan Shire podem ser lidos como um poderoso testemunho da época que vivemos. Edição bilíngue. Depois de participar do álbum Lemonade (2016) e do musical Black is King (2020), de Beyoncé, e de lançar duas festejadas plaquetes de poemas, a escritora nascida em Nairobi e radicada em Londres finalmente publica seu primeiro e aguardado livro. Bendita seja a filha criada por uma voz em sua cabeça nos apresenta um universo repleto de sofrimento e beleza, luz e sombra, ruído e silêncio. A experiência de crescer no corpo de uma jovem mulher negra em um ambiente francamente hostil marca a escrita da poeta com força brutal e comovente. "Já faz tempo que sou uma grande fã da poesia extraordinária de Warsan Shire. Seus poemas — primorosos, memoráveis e afiados — articulam uma experiência profunda que nunca deixa de me surpreender e de mexer comigo, já que ela tem o poder de dar voz ao indizível. Este livro tem muitas joias e deve ser saboreado com calma, permitindo que cada poema espetacular seja absorvido antes de avançar para o seguinte. Com certeza vou voltar a este livro muitas vezes." — Bernardine Evaristo "A primeira reunião de poemas de Warsan Shire, Bendita seja a filha criada por uma voz em sua cabeça, é eletrizante. Seus poemas capturam a condição da jovem mulher negra, o significado de procurar um lar no mundo, de ocupar o corpo de mulher, as tensões de conciliar fé e família e tudo aquilo que ameaça as fronteiras das expectativas e das obrigações. Os poemas deste livro, elaborados com destreza, são presentes ferozes e ternos." — Roxane Gay

Poemas

Bendita seja a filha criada por uma voz em sua cabeça

Denise Riley

Steve Ely

Zaffar Kunial

John Glenday

Poetry Society

The Pity

Ladan Osman

Tjawangwa Dema

Nick Makoha

Tsitsi Ella Jaji

Clifton Gachagua

Len Verwey

This eight-piece boxed set, an African Poetry Book Fund (APBF) project, features the work of seven African poets, with an introduction by Kwame Dawes, APBF series editor, and Chris Abani. The boxed set is an annual project starting in 2014 to ensure the publication of seven chapbooks by African poets through participating publishers. Publication is made possible through Slapering Hol Press, in association with APBF and the literary journal Prairie Schooner, with support from The Poetry Foundation. The chapbook contains: • Mandible by TJ Dema • The Cartographer of Water by Clifton Gachagua • Carnaval by Tsitsi Jaji • The Second Republic by Nick Makoha • Ordinary Heaven by Ladan Osman • Our Men Do Not Belong To Us by Wasan Shire • Otherwise Everything Goes On by Len Verwey

A Chapbook boxed set

Seven New Generation African Poets

'The mouthmark Book of Poetry' is an anthology of the individual-author titles published under the mouthmark poetry pamphlet series, comprising the work of Nick Makoha, Inua Ellams, Jacob Sam-La Rose, Jessica Horn, Truth Thomas, Denise Saul, Malika Booker, Janett Plummer and Warsan Shire. The series was conceived by flipped eye publishing's senior editor, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, as a means to get poets from non-mainstream backgrounds - including performance - into print. It was revolutionary for two reasons; first, it was a pamphlet series developed with a specific aim (later, tall-lighthouse would launch its pilot series, and, much later, Faber would launch its New Poets Initiative); second, it was a finite series - to end after ten pamphlets. After some success with the first two pamphlets in the series, Nick Makoha's 'The Lost Collection of an Invisible Man' (2005) and Inua Ellams' '13 Fairy Negro Tales' (2005), the Arts Council of England provided funding for the next four. It took six years for the series to be completed, but its impact far exceeded expectations. Authors such as Inua Ellams, Jacob Sam-La Rose (later editor of the last pamphlet in the series), Malika Booker, Nick Makoha and Warsan Shire, have risen to international prominence; three of the pamphlets were cited by the Poetry Book Society pamphlet selectors for their quality; two of the poets feature in the new Penguin Modern Poets series; and Truth Thomas's from his pamphlet 'Party of Black' (2006) was chosen for Nikki Giovanni's 'The 100 Best African American Poems' (Sourcebooks, 2010). Crucially, the series has retailed admirably as well, with over 50,000 copies sold at events - and through conventional retail channels. Initially released exactly four years ago as a hardback that retained hallmarks of the iconic mouthmark series, such as the distinctive brown paper-look cover with bold black designs, this low-priced paperback edition seeks to introduce more readers to the work of the nine brilliant poets published under the series.

The Mouthmark Book of Poetry

The latest volume in Penguin Modern Poets series - moving and unflinchingly honest poems from three different cultures about experiences of the female body, the family, sexual politics and conflict Your Family, Your Body features the work of Malika Booker, the Guyanese-British writer and performer behind London- and Chicago-based collective Malika's Kitchen; the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sharon Olds, one of America's most brilliant, beloved and candid voices; and Warsan Shire, the award-winning poet and first ever Young Poetry Laureate of London who also lent her words to Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade. Inspired by Penguin's enormously successful '60s series of the same name, the Penguin Modern Poets are succinct, collectible, lovingly-assembled guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry, from the UK, America and beyond. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the seasoned poetry fan and the curious reader alike to encounter our most exciting new voices.

Warsan Shire

About

Books

Join the club