Overview

The debut collection from award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire, celebrated collaborator on Beyonce's Lemonade and Black Is King. *SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION* ** AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4** 'Warsan Shire is an extraordinarily gifted poet whose profoundly moving poems so powerfully give voice to the unspoken' Bernardine Evaristo 'Vital, moving and courageous, this is a debut not to be missed' Guardian __________ Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma and resilience from the award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire, celebrated collaborator on Beyonce's Lemonade and Black Is King. With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a girl who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own stumbling way toward 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. These are noisy lives, full of music and weeping and surahs. These are fragrant lives, full of blood and perfume and jasmine. These are polychrome lives, full of moonlight and turmeric and kohl. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of survival. Each reader will come away changed. 'Warsan Shire electrifies... The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts' Roxane Gay 'Absolutely beautiful... So relevant' Elizabeth Day, *Day's Delights*

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9781784743703

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Reviews

I have long been a massive fan of Warsan Shire's extraordinarily gifted poetry. Her 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 An incredible collection -- Candice Carty-Williams * Stylist * Shire invokes the creative powers of the writer to transform one's past... Vital, moving and courageous, this is a debut not to be missed -- Mary Jean Chan * 'The best recent poetry' - Guardian * It is absolutely astonishing how much emotion, intelligence, imagination, and truth Warsan Shire can get into one collection. She is a poet of the highest order, with a compassionate heart, and a limitless mind -- Benjamin Zephaniah Must-read poetry from the superstar Somali-British writer Warsan Shire * Stylist *

I have long been a massive fan of Warsan Shire's extraordinarily gifted poetry. Her 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. This is a book of many gems, to be savoured slowly, allowing each wonderful poem to sink in before progressing to the next one. I will certainly be returning to it again and again -- Bernardine Evaristo 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 -- Roxane Gay Warsan Shire is both poet's poet and poet of the people the way Pablo Neruda and Gwendolyn Brooks were both poets beloved by poets as well as the people. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is full of ferocious love and truth. 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 National Book Award finalist, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in her Head is heartbreaking, full-bodied, and luscious. Although they encompass complex themes, the poems are lucid and utterly magically alive, it's almost like the book is a person! 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 Warsan Shire's fierce and compelling book of poems, should come with a warning label: These poems will break your heart. Never has the phrase, speak truth to power, been truer. But Shire does more than speak truth, she sings truth and that is precisely her power. Her poems are incantations, chants, spells for our time and all time. They address the displacements and violence experienced by migrants, refugees, those in dark bodies and in female bodies. Where else to go for safety and salve but poetry? Souls so deep that no cruelty or injustice can drown their song. A warrior woman poet, Shire wields words as a weapon of mass creation. It is a war every reader will want to fight with her. And we do, by reading and rereading her poems -- Julia Alvarez 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. Because in every line, every curve is an invitation to see differently what has been deemed ugly or difficult.This book is the art gallery I've yearned to visit -- Vivek Shraya, author of I'm Afraid of Men Read these candid and revelatory poems to wrap your arms tight around the certainty of your own fracture, to acknowledge the many places and many ways your body has succumbed to violation and only fitfully healed. Read them to know your whole muscled self as a vessel for grief, and to bask in the stuttered lyric of its story. 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

I have long been a massive fan of Warsan Shire's extraordinarily gifted poetry. Her 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 Warsan Shire electrifies... The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts -- Roxane Gay It is absolutely astonishing how much emotion, intelligence, imagination, and truth Warsan Shire can get into one collection. She is a poet of the highest order, with a compassionate heart, and a limitless mind -- Benjamin Zephaniah Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is full of ferocious love and truth. It is not overstatement to say Shire writes the way Nina Simone sang -- Terrance Hayes, author of National Book Award finalist, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin Heartbreaking, full-bodied, and luscious. Although they encompass complex themes, the poems are lucid and utterly magically alive, it's almost like the book is a person! -- Pascale Petit

I have long been a massive fan of Warsan Shire's extraordinarily gifted poetry. Her 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 It is absolutely astonishing how much emotion, intelligence, imagination, and truth Warsan Shire can get into one collection. She is a poet of the highest order, with a compassionate heart, and a limitless mind -- Benjamin Zephaniah Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is full of ferocious love and truth. It is not overstatement to say Shire writes the way Nina Simone sang -- Terrance Hayes, author of National Book Award finalist, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin Heartbreaking, full-bodied, and luscious. Although they encompass complex themes, the poems are lucid and utterly magically alive, it's almost like the book is a person! -- Pascale Petit 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... Enthralling... The poetry in Bless the Daughter soothes, even while it picks at the scabs of the wounds that cause trauma -- Dzifa Benson * Daily Telegraph *

Author Information

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. Shire wrote the poetry for the Peabody Award-winning visual album Lemonade and Disney film Black Is King in collaboration with Beyonce 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 lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her first full collection.

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