Occupation Poet, writer Role Writer Name Warsan Shire | Ethnicity Somali Nationality British | |
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Notable works Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth (2011) | ||
89plus marathon 2013 warsan shire a reading
Warsan Shire (born 1 August 1988) is a British writer, poet, editor and teacher, who was born to Somali parents in Kenya. In 2013 she was awarded the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize, chosen from a shortlist of six candidates out of a total 655 entries. Her words "No one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark", from the poem "Home", have been called "a rallying call for refugees and their advocates".
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Ugly warsan shire
Life
Born on 1 August 1988 in Kenya to Somali parents, Shire migrated with her family to the United Kingdom at the age of one. She has four siblings. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. As of 2015, she primarily resides in Los Angeles.
In 2011, she released Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth, a poetry pamphlet published by Flipped eye. Her full collection was released in 2016, also through flipped eye.
Shire has read her poetry in various artistic venues throughout the world, including in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, North America, South Africa and Kenya. Her poems have been published in various literary publications, including the Poetry Review, Magma and Wasafiri. Additionally, Shire's verse has been featured in the Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011) and Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014) collections. They have also been translated into a number of languages, including Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish and Estonian.
As of 2016, Shire is working on her first full-length poetry collection, having put out a limited release pamphlet called Her Blue Body in 2015. She serves as the poetry editor at SPOOK magazine and she teaches poetry workshops both globally and online for cathartic and aesthetic purposes.
Shire's poetry featured prominently in Beyoncé's 2016 feature-length film Lemonade. Knowles-Carter's interest in using Shire's work was sparked with Shire's piece "For Women Who Are Difficult To Love".
Influences
Shire uses not only her own personal experiences, but also the experiences of people that she is close with. She is quoted saying, "I either know, or I am every person I have written about, for or as. But I do imagine them in their most intimate settings." Shire's main interest is writing about and for people who are generally not heard otherwise, i.e. immigrants and refugees, as well as other marginalized groups of people too. Shire is also quoted saying, "I also navigate a lot through memory, my memories and other people's memories, trying to essentially just make sense of stuff". As a first generation immigrant herself, she has used her poetry to connect with her home country of Somalia, which she has never been to. She uses this position as an immigrant herself to convey the lives of these peoples. Shire utilizes the influences of her close relatives, and family members and their experiences to depict the struggles that they have all faced in her poetry.
Awards
Shire has received various awards for her art. In April 2013, she was presented with Brunel University's inaugural African Poetry Prize, an award earmarked for poets who have yet to publish a full-length poetry collection. She was chosen from a shortlist of six candidates out of a total 655 entries.
In October 2013, Shire was selected from a shortlist of six young bards as the first Young Poet Laureate for London. The honour is part of the London Legacy Development Corporation's Spoke programme, which focuses on promoting arts and culture in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the surrounding area.
In 2014, Shire was also chosen as Queensland, Australia's poet in residence, liaising with the Aboriginal Centre for Performing Arts over a six-week period.