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Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2022)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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
86 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2022
454 people are currently reading
33779 people want to read
About the author
Warsan Shire
15 books6,885 followersWarsan Shire is a 24 year old Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. Born in 1988, Warsan has read her work extensively all over Britain and internationally - including recent readings in South Africa, Italy, Germany, Canada, North America and Kenya- and her début book, 'TEACHING MY MOTHER HOW TO GIVE BIRTH' (flipped eye), was published in 2011. Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma and Poetry Review and in the anthology 'The Salt Book of Younger Poets' (Salt, 2011). She is the current poetry editor at SPOOK magazine. In 2012 she represented Somalia at the Poetry Parnassus, the festival of the world poets at the Southbank, London. She is a Complete Works II poet. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Warsan is also the unanimous winner of the 2013 Inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,614 reviews
August 4, 2024
Warshan Shire is a poet of strong and unforgettable presence. I have collected so many of their lines over the years, and (to borrow an expression from Christina Sharpe) they have collected me too. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging... Everything you did to me, I remember.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is no easy book. Within these poems is a woman wrestling her various hauntings: her body a site of savage surveillance, her girlhood a long inventory of violation, her home no longer a home but “the mouth of a shark.” All the torturous vagaries of living-while-woman, living-while-Black, living-while-refugee, written in and through precarity's unassuageable condition.
There is something that hurts so much in all of this. Shire's language can flay you open before you even notice the pain. It's poetry driven by terrible necessity: dark, difficult, and tense with potential. But every poem ultimately arrives at tenderness and care. There is a deep shared knowing between the speaker and the women in her life that makes possible escape, even if escape is only in the mind, even if escape cannot reprieve the vulnerability of compounded collective traumas. When Shire writes, towards the end of the book, “I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much / love, / you won’t be able to see beyond it,” she holds a space open for us to imagine otherwise, a space that is something like freedom.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is no easy book. Within these poems is a woman wrestling her various hauntings: her body a site of savage surveillance, her girlhood a long inventory of violation, her home no longer a home but “the mouth of a shark.” All the torturous vagaries of living-while-woman, living-while-Black, living-while-refugee, written in and through precarity's unassuageable condition.
There is something that hurts so much in all of this. Shire's language can flay you open before you even notice the pain. It's poetry driven by terrible necessity: dark, difficult, and tense with potential. But every poem ultimately arrives at tenderness and care. There is a deep shared knowing between the speaker and the women in her life that makes possible escape, even if escape is only in the mind, even if escape cannot reprieve the vulnerability of compounded collective traumas. When Shire writes, towards the end of the book, “I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much / love, / you won’t be able to see beyond it,” she holds a space open for us to imagine otherwise, a space that is something like freedom.
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April 10, 2024
Over the past few years you’ve likely encountered the poem Home by Somali British writer Warsan Shire, a heartbreaking poem about refugees that begins with ‘no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark / you only run for the border / when you see the whole city running as well.’ The poem implores empathy and understanding, and the tragedy is how many times the poem has circulated the internet because Shire’s words are the words needed at that moment of the news cycle. But Warsan Shire is much more than a viral poem, and with Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head, the 33 year old poets first full-length collection, she shows she has a multitude of words that will all make us better for having heard them. With arresting poetic language and visceral imagery, Shire’s long awaited collection will break your heart over and over agains as she addresses themes or migration, womanhood, familial relations fractured across the globe, and while trauma permeates the pages so does hope and the will to survive.
Speaking of the poem Home, it reappears in this collection newly revised and with a part 2 accompanying the already harrowing words. The line breaks mostly removed to read as prose poetry, Shire revists the poem to discuss the trauma that comes after leaving home and finding yourself lost in a new place.
So much is contained in this passage and these words resonate throughout the collection, addressing themes of being Othered in a new place while feeling your past disintegrating. ‘I can’t get the refugee out of my body,’ she writes in Assimilation, a poem of either sleepless nights or ‘dreaming in the wrong language.’ Always ready with a well earned stunner of an ending she warns:
‘those unable to grow the extra skin
die within the first six months in a host country.
At each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked
are you human?
The refugee is sure it’s still human but worries that overnight,
while it slept, there may have been a change in classification.’
Another aspect of the poem Shire has frequently wanted to highlight is that she writes about Black refugees. The poem has been used and gone viral during many refugee situations, and she has said in interviews 'I wrote those words for Black immigrants, and the most I’ve ever seen those words used was when the immigrants and refugees were lighter-skinned with lighter eyes. Obviously, you want your work to be used in any way to raise funds for all suffering people, but I want people to know who I wrote that about.' So, at the wishes of the author, please keep this in mind when reading the poem.
Dreaming recurs throughout the collection, such as the conclusion to Saint Hooyo (Hooyoo meaning mother as explained in the glossary of Somali terms at the end of the collection):
‘I don’t recognize my children
they speak and dream in the wrong language
as much as I understand
it may as well be the language of birds’
A moving passage with a dynamic approach to separation and migration with images of birds as well as a barrier even in dreams. I can’t attest to the validity but I’ve heard it said that you should translate into the language in which you dream, and this passage brought me the thought of translating oneself into a new country, as well as a person’s hopes and dreams being reconfigured because of the passage to a new country.
Shire addresses the agency over one’s own body in multiple ways throughout the collection, from skin and voice marking one as an Other, to the gaze of men in a patriarchal society. Poems of women using pigeon blood on their wedding night to appear ‘chaste’, to ‘protecting body and home / from intruders.’ Dangers are everywhere, such as in a traffic stop where young people are compared to ‘an animal standing on hind legs / pretending to understand why it must die.’
It is a joy to read through these poems and see Shire continue to bless the reader with her words. Musical artist Beyonce had a good eye when she chose Shire to write for her Lemonade documentary and we are all better for having had her brought into the literary world. Bless the Daughter… chronicles life from ‘extreme girlhood’ to coming into womanhood, carrying the history of traumas—both personal and generational—across borders of self, culture and country. These are poems of ‘fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense,’ as the poet writes, ‘full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl.’ There is trauma present on every page, but through her words of understanding and examination we find that she is able to ‘rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, / you won’t be able to see beyond it.’ A must read.
5/5
Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle
Dear Uncle, is everything you love foreign
or are you foreign to everything you love?
We’re all animals and the body wants what it wants,
I know. The blonde said Come in, take off
your coat and what do you want to drink?
Love is not haram but after years of fucking
women who cannot pronounce your name,
you find yourself in the foreign food aisle,
beside the turmeric and the saffron,
pressing your face into the ground, praying
in a language you haven’t used in years.
Speaking of the poem Home, it reappears in this collection newly revised and with a part 2 accompanying the already harrowing words. The line breaks mostly removed to read as prose poetry, Shire revists the poem to discuss the trauma that comes after leaving home and finding yourself lost in a new place.
‘Where I came from is disappearing. I am unwelcome. My beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing. I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory…’
So much is contained in this passage and these words resonate throughout the collection, addressing themes of being Othered in a new place while feeling your past disintegrating. ‘I can’t get the refugee out of my body,’ she writes in Assimilation, a poem of either sleepless nights or ‘dreaming in the wrong language.’ Always ready with a well earned stunner of an ending she warns:
‘those unable to grow the extra skin
die within the first six months in a host country.
At each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked
are you human?
The refugee is sure it’s still human but worries that overnight,
while it slept, there may have been a change in classification.’
Another aspect of the poem Shire has frequently wanted to highlight is that she writes about Black refugees. The poem has been used and gone viral during many refugee situations, and she has said in interviews 'I wrote those words for Black immigrants, and the most I’ve ever seen those words used was when the immigrants and refugees were lighter-skinned with lighter eyes. Obviously, you want your work to be used in any way to raise funds for all suffering people, but I want people to know who I wrote that about.' So, at the wishes of the author, please keep this in mind when reading the poem.
Dreaming recurs throughout the collection, such as the conclusion to Saint Hooyo (Hooyoo meaning mother as explained in the glossary of Somali terms at the end of the collection):
‘I don’t recognize my children
they speak and dream in the wrong language
as much as I understand
it may as well be the language of birds’
A moving passage with a dynamic approach to separation and migration with images of birds as well as a barrier even in dreams. I can’t attest to the validity but I’ve heard it said that you should translate into the language in which you dream, and this passage brought me the thought of translating oneself into a new country, as well as a person’s hopes and dreams being reconfigured because of the passage to a new country.
Shire addresses the agency over one’s own body in multiple ways throughout the collection, from skin and voice marking one as an Other, to the gaze of men in a patriarchal society. Poems of women using pigeon blood on their wedding night to appear ‘chaste’, to ‘protecting body and home / from intruders.’ Dangers are everywhere, such as in a traffic stop where young people are compared to ‘an animal standing on hind legs / pretending to understand why it must die.’
It is a joy to read through these poems and see Shire continue to bless the reader with her words. Musical artist Beyonce had a good eye when she chose Shire to write for her Lemonade documentary and we are all better for having had her brought into the literary world. Bless the Daughter… chronicles life from ‘extreme girlhood’ to coming into womanhood, carrying the history of traumas—both personal and generational—across borders of self, culture and country. These are poems of ‘fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense,’ as the poet writes, ‘full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl.’ There is trauma present on every page, but through her words of understanding and examination we find that she is able to ‘rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love, / you won’t be able to see beyond it.’ A must read.
5/5
Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle
Dear Uncle, is everything you love foreign
or are you foreign to everything you love?
We’re all animals and the body wants what it wants,
I know. The blonde said Come in, take off
your coat and what do you want to drink?
Love is not haram but after years of fucking
women who cannot pronounce your name,
you find yourself in the foreign food aisle,
beside the turmeric and the saffron,
pressing your face into the ground, praying
in a language you haven’t used in years.
February 10, 2021
With her first full-length, poetry collection, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice In Her Head, Warsan Shire electrifies. Her poems capture young black womanhood, what it means to search for home in the world, what it means to inhabit a woman’s body, the tensions of reconciling faith and family and everything that threatens the borders of expectation and obligation. The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts.
April 5, 2022
Warshan Shire is a young Kenyan-born Somali poet and this book is her 1st full length collection of poems. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her 2nd collection that I have read by the author. I was so impressed by the 1st one that I gave it 5* and I do not read a lot of poetry. I liked this one as well but Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth is still my favourite. It was small, raw; it was pulling your heart out while you were marveling at the beauty of the words. Bless the Daugher is a collection of a more mature author, the poems are connected through themes and characters, the poems seem more thought out. I thought that the increase in sophistication of the poems made some of them too cryptic and it took out the impact the 1st collection had on me. I still think it a wonderful and heart-breaking collection of poetry about womanhood, refugee’s life, displacement, identity, war, love and death.
Also, I wish I knew there was a glossary at the end of the book. There were many African terms that I did not know and I missed the meaning of some poems because of that.
Also, I wish I knew there was a glossary at the end of the book. There were many African terms that I did not know and I missed the meaning of some poems because of that.
December 22, 2022
"no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. the boy you went to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory, is holding a gun bigger than his body. you only leave home when home won’t let you stay."
March 13, 2022
Painfully beautiful poems of migration, womanhood, trauma and resilience.
April 11, 2022
It feels weird that Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is Warsan Shire's first full-length poetry collection. The Somali British poet is one of the most exciting and well-established voices in poetry today. If you haven't read her debut chapbook Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, you will have heard of her as a collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King. Warsan Shire is the moment.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that her debut collection was one of my most anticipated releases of 2022. I preordered it months in advance (something I rarely do) and kept staring at the gorgeous cover once that was released. I was beyond excited when I held it in my hands at the beginning of March. Bless the Daughter is published in a gorgeous hardback edition with the most beautiful end papers that I have ever seen – the folks over at Penguin Random House sure know how I love a good bright HOT PINK!
Unfortunately, soon after jumping into the collection I'd knew that it wouldn't be nearly as good as its chapbook predecessor, and that it would leave me being utterly disappointed. I don't wanna sound like a drama queen but I'd been starving for new exciting poems by Shire – and this collection simply didn't deliver.
I'd guess around a third of the poems have been previously (!) published before, either in Teaching My Mother..., Her Blue Body or Lemonade. So, they're not new at all. For a small book like this, which only consists of 66 pages and comes at a price of around 14€, that's a real bummer. Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way is the fact that some of these old poems were altered slightly for this "new" collection – often for the worse.
"Conversations about Home at the Deportation Centre" is one of my all-time favorite poems of Shire's and it was totally butchered to an abridged version called "Home" in Bless the Daughter... – I will never understand the artistic choice behind that. It makes no sense to butcher a perfectly fine poem like that.
Overall, this new collection felt more like a step back, rather than a step forward. Some of the new poems were interesting but they all seemed like mirrors and weaker versions of Shire's old poetry. This might be because Shire usually writes about the same themes – migration, womanhood, trauma, resilience – but it was disappointing nonetheless.
But let's leave on a more positive note: Shire's debut collection is full of blessings – for home, ugly daughters, camels, the Sharmuto, the moon, for guns tossed into rivers. It is full of Arabic words (which are explained in an informative glossary at the end of the collection); it's full of (to-me) foreign music and sounds (of the surahs, the birds, and sirens); it smells of blood, perfume, jasmine and shisha smoke. It is possible to get infatuated with the world that Shire is painting with her word and pictures. She's still a skilled poet.
So, if you wanna give Warsan Shire a shot (which I'd highly recommend), I'd say read Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth first. It is the more polished, structurally sound collection. And if you're then craving for more, go into this long-awaited full-length collection with the right expectations: lots of old poems reworked anew (sometimes for better, often for worse) but also some new ones that'll invite into a new world, one that Shire always manages to completely make her own.
At parties I point to my body and sayWhen I first read Teaching My Mother... in 2017, I have to admit that I wasn't overly impressed with it. At the time, I hadn't read that much (modern) poetry and felt like a lot of things flew over my head. I reread it in 2021 and fell utterly in love with Shire, her ability to string sentences together, and find the right words and images for hauntingly sorrowful and desperate situations. On this reread, she became one of my favorite modern poets.
Oh, this old thing? This is where men come to die.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that her debut collection was one of my most anticipated releases of 2022. I preordered it months in advance (something I rarely do) and kept staring at the gorgeous cover once that was released. I was beyond excited when I held it in my hands at the beginning of March. Bless the Daughter is published in a gorgeous hardback edition with the most beautiful end papers that I have ever seen – the folks over at Penguin Random House sure know how I love a good bright HOT PINK!
Unfortunately, soon after jumping into the collection I'd knew that it wouldn't be nearly as good as its chapbook predecessor, and that it would leave me being utterly disappointed. I don't wanna sound like a drama queen but I'd been starving for new exciting poems by Shire – and this collection simply didn't deliver.
I'd guess around a third of the poems have been previously (!) published before, either in Teaching My Mother..., Her Blue Body or Lemonade. So, they're not new at all. For a small book like this, which only consists of 66 pages and comes at a price of around 14€, that's a real bummer. Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way is the fact that some of these old poems were altered slightly for this "new" collection – often for the worse.
"Conversations about Home at the Deportation Centre" is one of my all-time favorite poems of Shire's and it was totally butchered to an abridged version called "Home" in Bless the Daughter... – I will never understand the artistic choice behind that. It makes no sense to butcher a perfectly fine poem like that.
Overall, this new collection felt more like a step back, rather than a step forward. Some of the new poems were interesting but they all seemed like mirrors and weaker versions of Shire's old poetry. This might be because Shire usually writes about the same themes – migration, womanhood, trauma, resilience – but it was disappointing nonetheless.
Mama, I made itWhereas Shire's older poems are vivid and unique, the newer poems feel more hollow. Albeit her technique seems the same: Shire is still drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines. She still writes about the unique experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. However, this time around, she didn't manage to make them come to life. There is not a single poem in this collection that has become a new favorite.
out of your home
alive, raised by
the voices
in my head.
But let's leave on a more positive note: Shire's debut collection is full of blessings – for home, ugly daughters, camels, the Sharmuto, the moon, for guns tossed into rivers. It is full of Arabic words (which are explained in an informative glossary at the end of the collection); it's full of (to-me) foreign music and sounds (of the surahs, the birds, and sirens); it smells of blood, perfume, jasmine and shisha smoke. It is possible to get infatuated with the world that Shire is painting with her word and pictures. She's still a skilled poet.
So, if you wanna give Warsan Shire a shot (which I'd highly recommend), I'd say read Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth first. It is the more polished, structurally sound collection. And if you're then craving for more, go into this long-awaited full-length collection with the right expectations: lots of old poems reworked anew (sometimes for better, often for worse) but also some new ones that'll invite into a new world, one that Shire always manages to completely make her own.
July 4, 2022
I was extremely excited to see this on NetGalley and it didn’t disappoint. It’s a strong collection of emotional, powerful and raw poetry that is a great continuation of her work.
February 17, 2022
“Bless The Daughter Raised By The Voice In Her Head: Poems” (2022) is written by the multi-award-winning Somali-British author/poet Warsan Shire: who served as the first Young Poet Laurate of London where she was raised after resettlement. Shire lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband and two children.
Somalia is recognized for having the longest coastline on the African continent and is populated by over 16 million people. Somalia has been ravaged by Civil War (1991-2006) and the terror of lawlessness and violence against the people-- millions have fled due to these conditions combined with widespread government corruption, crime, famine, drought and flash flooding. Shire related the inhumane conditions from her childhood in these searingly profound and unforgettable poems. In the poem, ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ Sire declares: “Mama I made it/out of your home/alive, raised by the voices/in my head.”
The scrutinizing process of immigration paperwork and outsider refugee status was certainly preferable to the taunting and heckling of those in her new country or finding a child’s body amongst the rubble from her war-ravaged homeland. Shire introduced readers to her native language (with translations) and to the prayers and customs of her Muslim faith that gave her the strength to endure. Many of Shire’s poems were written in memory of her “Hooyo” (mother) and follow a multitude of blessings and gratitude: Bless The School For Girls – Bless The Real Housewife – Bless Your Ugly Daughter – Bless The Ghost - Bless The Blood – Bless Our CCTV Star - Bless The Sharmuto – Bless The Moon – Bless This House.
The Somalia Refugee Crisis has continued for nearly three decades. Shire tells us that “No one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land.” While reading this startling collection, there was much to learn and of things taken for granted in civilized society. ** With thanks to Penguin Random House via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.
Somalia is recognized for having the longest coastline on the African continent and is populated by over 16 million people. Somalia has been ravaged by Civil War (1991-2006) and the terror of lawlessness and violence against the people-- millions have fled due to these conditions combined with widespread government corruption, crime, famine, drought and flash flooding. Shire related the inhumane conditions from her childhood in these searingly profound and unforgettable poems. In the poem, ‘What Doesn’t Kill You’ Sire declares: “Mama I made it/out of your home/alive, raised by the voices/in my head.”
The scrutinizing process of immigration paperwork and outsider refugee status was certainly preferable to the taunting and heckling of those in her new country or finding a child’s body amongst the rubble from her war-ravaged homeland. Shire introduced readers to her native language (with translations) and to the prayers and customs of her Muslim faith that gave her the strength to endure. Many of Shire’s poems were written in memory of her “Hooyo” (mother) and follow a multitude of blessings and gratitude: Bless The School For Girls – Bless The Real Housewife – Bless Your Ugly Daughter – Bless The Ghost - Bless The Blood – Bless Our CCTV Star - Bless The Sharmuto – Bless The Moon – Bless This House.
The Somalia Refugee Crisis has continued for nearly three decades. Shire tells us that “No one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land.” While reading this startling collection, there was much to learn and of things taken for granted in civilized society. ** With thanks to Penguin Random House via NetGalley for the DDC for the purpose of review.
April 16, 2023
"Dear Uncle, is everything you love foreign or are you foreign to everything you love?"
Some lines in this collection will leave you breathless. WOW
Some lines in this collection will leave you breathless. WOW
April 5, 2024
"I'll rewrite this whole life and this time, there'll be so much love, you won't be able to see beyond it."
This was one of the best poetry books I have ever read, highly recommend!🤍
This was one of the best poetry books I have ever read, highly recommend!🤍
March 3, 2022
Well, I’m not *not* crying. Warsan Shire is brilliant. A beautiful collection of poems, everyone should read this. While tenderly written, every line is kind of a gut punch that manages to be completely worth it. Immigration, family, womanhood, so many important themes in such a short amount of pages. I wish it was 10 times longer. Bless This House and Backwards hit me the hardest upon first reading, but I thought every piece was strong and I’m sure when I reread and the words have marinated longer, another will resonate with me even more. And on a superficial note, can we talk about this gorgeous cover? This is one you could judge accurately, although I try not to do that.
May 14, 2022
RTC
TWs: Rape, Death, Violence, FGM, Misogyny, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Gun Violence, War, Racism, Torture, Miscarriage, Abandonment, Xenophobia, Suicide, Eating Disorder
TWs: Rape, Death, Violence, FGM, Misogyny, Child Abuse, Child Death, Death, Gun Violence, War, Racism, Torture, Miscarriage, Abandonment, Xenophobia, Suicide, Eating Disorder
November 20, 2022
"forgive me please, famine back home."
It took me eight months to get through this because there were too many lines and entire poems that genuinely made me burst into tears. Tears for my own hooyo, for her hooyo, for myself. Like, Miss Shire really said it's fun for the whole family because after reading Lullaby For Father, I picked up the phone to contact my dad so he could hear it and maybe even cry for himself too.
Also, shoutout to the years I spent in Somalia myself; the amount of references and subtleties that wouldn't resonate with me otherwise is finally making me grateful for it.
It took me eight months to get through this because there were too many lines and entire poems that genuinely made me burst into tears. Tears for my own hooyo, for her hooyo, for myself. Like, Miss Shire really said it's fun for the whole family because after reading Lullaby For Father, I picked up the phone to contact my dad so he could hear it and maybe even cry for himself too.
Also, shoutout to the years I spent in Somalia myself; the amount of references and subtleties that wouldn't resonate with me otherwise is finally making me grateful for it.
March 29, 2023
Che bella Warsan Shire!
Mi piace guardare i volti di chi scrive forse per rendere più concrete le parole che leggo, non so.
Quello che so è che fatico a far coincidere la luce di questo volto con il buio dei versi che ho letto.
Parole che tagliano, immagini che colpiscono duramente.
Sottolineo, sottolineo, sottolineo e non rimangono righe scoperte.
Ho letto con paura perché qui sono racchiusi dolori veri, reali.
Ferite, violenze, malattie.
Emozioni che trasudano rabbia ed odio.
Corpi infantili e corpi adulti.
Anche il tema del rifugiato ricorre e colpisce l’abilità dell’autrice di restituire immagini precise di un’esperienza che non ha fatto personalmente (figlia dei rifugiati somali è cresciuta nel Regno Unito).
Sono versi che proprio in questi giorni fanno particolarmente male:
” Nessuno lascerebbe casa se non fosse la casa a spingerti verso il mare. Nessuno lascerebbe casa se non quando la casa è una voce all’orecchio che dice – vattene, corri, subito. Non so più cosa sono.”
Mi piace guardare i volti di chi scrive forse per rendere più concrete le parole che leggo, non so.
Quello che so è che fatico a far coincidere la luce di questo volto con il buio dei versi che ho letto.
Parole che tagliano, immagini che colpiscono duramente.
Sottolineo, sottolineo, sottolineo e non rimangono righe scoperte.
Ho letto con paura perché qui sono racchiusi dolori veri, reali.
Ferite, violenze, malattie.
Emozioni che trasudano rabbia ed odio.
Corpi infantili e corpi adulti.
Anche il tema del rifugiato ricorre e colpisce l’abilità dell’autrice di restituire immagini precise di un’esperienza che non ha fatto personalmente (figlia dei rifugiati somali è cresciuta nel Regno Unito).
Sono versi che proprio in questi giorni fanno particolarmente male:
” Nessuno lascerebbe casa se non fosse la casa a spingerti verso il mare. Nessuno lascerebbe casa se non quando la casa è una voce all’orecchio che dice – vattene, corri, subito. Non so più cosa sono.”
August 31, 2025
I'd previously read some of Warsan Shire's poems here and there/in anthologies. this was the first full collection of theirs I've read, and really liked it.
awa liking the poems themselves...
I liked that it was read by them. great to hear them, and their intentions for the poems with respect to rhythm, etc.
and I liked hearing about some of the previous incarnations of some of the poems, at the end of the book. the sense of development, evolution, and the reworking of ideas.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
accessed as a library audiobook, read by the author 😊
awa liking the poems themselves...
I liked that it was read by them. great to hear them, and their intentions for the poems with respect to rhythm, etc.
and I liked hearing about some of the previous incarnations of some of the poems, at the end of the book. the sense of development, evolution, and the reworking of ideas.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
accessed as a library audiobook, read by the author 😊
March 8, 2025
https://youtu.be/manRJDRDBzI?si=0X5ck...
Ho notato che sto leggendo libri dalla copertina rosa e mi sono detta:" Perché non leggere, da qui all'8 marzo, i libri che ho con la copertina rosa e i suoi simili?"
Si sa, il rosa è sempre stato considerato un colore femminile, quindi proviamo a vedere che ne salta fuori.
Questa raccolta di poesie di Warsan Shire è il terzo libro ROSA.
Credo ormai di provare piacere nel leggere il dolore....masochismo? Si penso di si.
Nata in Kenya nell'88 da genitori somali e rifugiata a Londra ancora in fasce, Shire scrive di immigrazione, razzismo, guerra, infibulazione, stupro, morte. Un grido rivolto a coloro che ancora voltano lo sguardo quando si tratta di "stranieri".
Mi ha ricordato molto Samia, la ragazza somala che voleva correre in "Non dirmi che hai paura", ma Samia non ha potuto gridare al mondo intero cosa vuol dire cercare un posto nel mondo, cosa vuol dire abitare un corpo di donna. E come Samia milioni di donne ancora vengono sottomesse da quelli che chiamano "famiglia".
Spero che un giorno le cose cambieranno. Spero non ci sarà più bisogno di scrivere per far conoscere, ma si scriverà solo per ricordare.
Ho notato che sto leggendo libri dalla copertina rosa e mi sono detta:" Perché non leggere, da qui all'8 marzo, i libri che ho con la copertina rosa e i suoi simili?"
Si sa, il rosa è sempre stato considerato un colore femminile, quindi proviamo a vedere che ne salta fuori.
Questa raccolta di poesie di Warsan Shire è il terzo libro ROSA.
Credo ormai di provare piacere nel leggere il dolore....masochismo? Si penso di si.
Nata in Kenya nell'88 da genitori somali e rifugiata a Londra ancora in fasce, Shire scrive di immigrazione, razzismo, guerra, infibulazione, stupro, morte. Un grido rivolto a coloro che ancora voltano lo sguardo quando si tratta di "stranieri".
Mi ha ricordato molto Samia, la ragazza somala che voleva correre in "Non dirmi che hai paura", ma Samia non ha potuto gridare al mondo intero cosa vuol dire cercare un posto nel mondo, cosa vuol dire abitare un corpo di donna. E come Samia milioni di donne ancora vengono sottomesse da quelli che chiamano "famiglia".
Spero che un giorno le cose cambieranno. Spero non ci sarà più bisogno di scrivere per far conoscere, ma si scriverà solo per ricordare.
December 9, 2021
Whoops this doesn't come out until March but you will want this poetry collection. You think you don't recognize the poet's name but most of the words in Beyonce's Lemonade were penned by Warsan Shire.
Poems in this collection range from the refugee experience to the body to love. She's also well known for the poem "Home," which can be found online and starts with this line:
"no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark"
Shire is British, born to Somali parents in Kenya, so many of her poems ponder belonging and place.
I will recommend the audio, read by the poet. Thanks to Random House Audio for an early listen through the Volumes app.
Poems in this collection range from the refugee experience to the body to love. She's also well known for the poem "Home," which can be found online and starts with this line:
"no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark"
Shire is British, born to Somali parents in Kenya, so many of her poems ponder belonging and place.
I will recommend the audio, read by the poet. Thanks to Random House Audio for an early listen through the Volumes app.
April 3, 2022
Emotional! So glad that I was able to borrow this from the Toronto Public Library!
My favourites poems include: Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle, Unbearable Weight of Staying, Bless This House, Earth to Yosra, Bless Grace Jones and the two poems that struck me deeply: Bless Our CCTV Star and Grief Has Its Blue Hands in My Hair
Warsan Shire has so much to say about family and lessons learned! She asks so many questions that I ask myself all the time: especially when I think of loved ones lost, community members lost, the joys and pain of being a girl, a woman, a girl learning from a woman and then a woman of your own. She also illustrates to me why I love when people bring their dialect, their culture, and their community to the forefront of their work: it goes hard!
My favourites poems include: Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle, Unbearable Weight of Staying, Bless This House, Earth to Yosra, Bless Grace Jones and the two poems that struck me deeply: Bless Our CCTV Star and Grief Has Its Blue Hands in My Hair
Warsan Shire has so much to say about family and lessons learned! She asks so many questions that I ask myself all the time: especially when I think of loved ones lost, community members lost, the joys and pain of being a girl, a woman, a girl learning from a woman and then a woman of your own. She also illustrates to me why I love when people bring their dialect, their culture, and their community to the forefront of their work: it goes hard!
January 26, 2024
i think i was not the right audience for this. even though i come from a muslim family, i hardly understood any of these references.
i believe that this poetry collection would be very meaningful and relatable for somali immigrants. important themes, but not for me. prose was also not for me.
i believe that this poetry collection would be very meaningful and relatable for somali immigrants. important themes, but not for me. prose was also not for me.
January 1, 2026
The refugee's heart has six chambers.
In the first is your mother's unpacked suitcase
In the second, your father cries into his hands.
The third room is an immigration office,
your severed legs in the fourth,
in the fifth a uterus - yours?
The sixth opens with the right papers.
I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark.
Home is the barrel of a gun. No one would leave home unless home chased you to the shore. No one would leave home until home is a voice in your ear saying -- leave, run, now. I don't know what I've become.
July 14, 2023
This beautiful beautiful book. It’s so raw and gut-wrenching and haunting. The words stick to me, and choke me.
Can’t believe Warsan Shire has slipped from my attention until now. Her words, she, is so powerful yet tender at the same time. She’s taken my breath away.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is a poetry collection about girlhood, womanhood, grief, trauma, immigration, family. Warsan touches upon these topics in such an intimate and breathtaking way. Bless the author. Bless her words. Bless this bundle.
Can’t believe Warsan Shire has slipped from my attention until now. Her words, she, is so powerful yet tender at the same time. She’s taken my breath away.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is a poetry collection about girlhood, womanhood, grief, trauma, immigration, family. Warsan touches upon these topics in such an intimate and breathtaking way. Bless the author. Bless her words. Bless this bundle.
December 27, 2022
Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
she has a refugee camp tucked
behind each ear, her body is a body littered
with ugly things
but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.
her hands are a civil war,
she has a refugee camp tucked
behind each ear, her body is a body littered
with ugly things
but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.
March 15, 2026
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
I wanted to cry after finishing this. Each line and each poem was so beautifully written, yet so tragic.I kept feeling my eyebrows go up in shock of what I had just read. I am beyond amazed by the words and the expressions that tell stories of refugees struggling to survive, young girls r**ed by men from their own family, social norms barring girls that are justified in the name of religion and culture. Each poem is so impactful that I can't skip even a single line. I've never been so interested in flipping the pages of a book of poems before. I could not stop reading this.The lines make you feel anger, sadness, and pain. I am so heartbroken by Warsan Shire's writing.
(Books to read during the trump administration)
I wanted to cry after finishing this. Each line and each poem was so beautifully written, yet so tragic.I kept feeling my eyebrows go up in shock of what I had just read. I am beyond amazed by the words and the expressions that tell stories of refugees struggling to survive, young girls r**ed by men from their own family, social norms barring girls that are justified in the name of religion and culture. Each poem is so impactful that I can't skip even a single line. I've never been so interested in flipping the pages of a book of poems before. I could not stop reading this.The lines make you feel anger, sadness, and pain. I am so heartbroken by Warsan Shire's writing.
"»The refugee’s heart has six chambers.
In the first is your mother’s unpacked suitcase.
In the second, your father cries into his hands.
The third room is an immigration office,
your severed legs in the fourth,
in the fifth a uterus—yours?
The sixth opens with the right papers.
»At each and every checkpoint the refugee is asked
are you human?
The refugee is sure it’s still human but worries that overnight,
while it slept, there may have been a change in classification.
»No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for
the border when you see the whole city running as well. The boy you went
to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory, is holding a
gun bigger than his body. You only leave home when home won’t let you
stay. No one puts their children in a boat, unless the water is safer than the land.
»And if you were to survive, greeted on
the other side—Go home Blacks, dirty refugees, sucking our country dry of
milk, dark with their hands out, smell strange, savage, look what they’ve
done to their own countries, what will they do to ours?
»Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women.
Sometimes, the men—they come with keys,
and sometimes, the men—they come with hammers.
A man who won’t listen to words, will listen to action.
I said Stop, I said No and he heard nothing.
»The poem can start with him walking backwards into a room.
I can make the blood run back up my nose, ants rushing into a hole.
We grow into smaller bodies, my breasts disappear,
I can write the poem and make it disappear.
Step-dad spits liquor back into glass,
Mum’s body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place,
maybe she keeps the baby.
Maybe we’re okay, kid?"
(Books to read during the trump administration)
March 26, 2023
Beautiful use of words, intuitive understanding, clear yet unseen. In absolute awe of this mastery of language, poetry like this pulls your heart in a very dreamy way. Imagine coming up with this : an animal standing on hind legs pretending to understand why it must die. My heart ♥️VICTORIA IN ILLIYIN.
“Our Victoria growing gills in paradise, arms outstretched
in joy, wading in rivers of warm milk, swimming with the lost
babies of Eden, back strokes in the streams of heaven.
Our Victoria, gently carried out of the water on the shoulders
of angels, tenderly placed on the upturned palm of God.
Blessings to our sweet Victoria, rewarded with 72 devoted mothers
who delicately dry her small body with wool softer than skin.”
❤️🌈 I am in absolute awe. Amazing.
Excerpt From
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
“Our Victoria growing gills in paradise, arms outstretched
in joy, wading in rivers of warm milk, swimming with the lost
babies of Eden, back strokes in the streams of heaven.
Our Victoria, gently carried out of the water on the shoulders
of angels, tenderly placed on the upturned palm of God.
Blessings to our sweet Victoria, rewarded with 72 devoted mothers
who delicately dry her small body with wool softer than skin.”
❤️🌈 I am in absolute awe. Amazing.
Excerpt From
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head
September 16, 2024
2 disappointing stars…
At some point, I was nodding while reading, like someone who gets it, but the truth is I was confused and trying to convince myself otherwise.
At some point, I was nodding while reading, like someone who gets it, but the truth is I was confused and trying to convince myself otherwise.
April 16, 2022
Accessible and devastating and memorable.
August 3, 2024
Beprotiškai gilus kūrinys apie meilę, karą ir mirtį. Namus, kurių nebėra, nekaltą moteriškumą ir brutalų vyriškumą. Apie kūną, kuris tau nebepriklauso. Apie mamą, kuri šykšti meilės. Apie kosmonautą tėvą, kuris palikęs gimtinę joje palaidojo ir didžiulę dalį savęs. Sukrečiančiai jautri ir paveiki poezijos rinktinė.
"The refugee’s heart has six chambers.
In the first is your mother’s unpacked suitcase.
In the second, your father cries into his hands.
The third room is an immigration office,
your severed legs in the fourth,
in the fifth a uterus—yours?
The sixth opens with the right papers."
-
"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. The boy you went to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory, is holding a gun bigger than his body. You only leave home when home won’t let you stay."
"The refugee’s heart has six chambers.
In the first is your mother’s unpacked suitcase.
In the second, your father cries into his hands.
The third room is an immigration office,
your severed legs in the fourth,
in the fifth a uterus—yours?
The sixth opens with the right papers."
-
"No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. You only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. The boy you went to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory, is holding a gun bigger than his body. You only leave home when home won’t let you stay."
September 5, 2024
Poetry that brings tears to your eyes!
Loved it!
Loved it!
March 10, 2022
2.5 rounded up
Poetry is so subjective, and really hit or miss for me. This to say that I thought some of these poems were striking and memorable (particularly the one on Victoria Climbie), whereas others - whilst including some great imagery and writing - didn't leave much of an impression. I'd suggest reading this one if it sounds interesting or up your street and making up your own mind.
Thank you Netgalley and Vintage for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Poetry is so subjective, and really hit or miss for me. This to say that I thought some of these poems were striking and memorable (particularly the one on Victoria Climbie), whereas others - whilst including some great imagery and writing - didn't leave much of an impression. I'd suggest reading this one if it sounds interesting or up your street and making up your own mind.
Thank you Netgalley and Vintage for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
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