BIO
Warsan Shire is a prominent writer of poetry as well as teacher and editor. Born in Nairobi in 1988 to Somali parents, she grew up in Harlesden in North-West London. This experience continues to mark her identity as one that is influenced by a combination of different cultures, countries and languages. After studying creative writing at university, Shire later joined The Complete Works Poetry mentoring scheme for burgeoning poets. In 2018, she was appointed a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The writer currently lives in California with her husband and children.
Shire describes herself as a poet standing at a complex intersection, writing about Somalia from her position in England. Her particular diasporic experience is characterised by a deeply ambiguous and uncanny shuttling between positions and origins, between home and away. Her poems move in circles around non-traditional female genealogies and burrow for the partially-destroyed roots of family trees.
Her work oscillates seamlessly between verse and prose-poetry. In 2011, she published her first poetry chapbook entitled Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth. This debut was followed by a second pamphlet, Our Men Do Not Belong To Us (2014), tackling similar intersectional issues. Shire’s subsequent chapbook Her Blue Body (2015) consists of work originating from her time as the first Young Poet Laureate for London between 2013 and 2014. Her poem ‘Home’ became widely used to show support for victims of the refugee crisis. In 2022, she published her first full collection of poems, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, tracing themes of migration, trauma and womanhood. The collection gained critical acclaim, and was nominated for various literary prizes such as the Dylan Thomas Prize and Griffin Poetry Prize. Her individual writings have also been published on platforms such as Wasafiri, Magma, Poetry Review and in the anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets (2011). Her works have since been translated into numerous languages.
Alongside her poetic work, Shire has also engaged with other cultural pursuits. In 2012, she for instance recorded an album of spoken word poetry entitled warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of loneliness). She later contributed to writing Beyoncé’s popular music album Lemonade (2016). In 2019, she wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising, centring on marginalised women’s voices in Africa’s largest refugee camp.
• https://warsanshire.squarespace.com/
Selected Prizes and Nominations
• Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2013
• Young Poet Laureate of London 2014
• Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2022
• Dylan Thomas Prize 2023
• Griffin Poetry Prize 2023
Bibliography
Anyokwu, Christopher. “Through a Gendered Lens: Figurations of Loss, Longing and Loneliness in Warsan Shire’s Poetry.” Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2021, pp. 67-84.
Boehmer, Elleke. “Postcolonial Writing, Terror, and Continuity: Okri, D’Aguiar, NourbeSe Philip, Shire.” Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-Century Critical Readings, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 63-85.
Busby, Margaret, editor. New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent. Oxford, 2019.
Bwana, Edith Weseja. “Has Feminism Changed Women’s Realities in Africa? An Interrogation of the Poems of Ogundipe and Shire.” Journal of Humanities & Social Science, vol. 11, no. 2, 2022.
Delanoy, Werner. “The Power of Literature (Teaching): Experiencing Warsan Shire’s Home.” Power in Language, Culture, Literature and Education, Narr Francke Attempo Verlag GmbH, 2023, pp. 279-300.
Eze, Chielozona. “The Body in Pain and the Politics of Culture: Nnedi Okorafor and Warsan Shire.” Ethics and Human Rights in Anglophone African Women’s Literature: Feminist Empathy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 95-120.
Gunes, Ali. “Why Do Refugees Have to Leave Their Sweet Home “Unless Home is the Mouth of a Shark”? An Analysis of Warsan Shire’s Poem Home.” Journal of History, Culture, and Art Research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2019, pp. 19-35.
Hess, Amanda. “Warsan Shire, the Woman Who Gave Poetry to Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade.’” The New York Times, 27 April 2016.
Khalifa, Majeed Hammadi. “The Use of Homeland Voice in Warsan Shire’s “Home” Poem: Analytical Study.” Journal of Language Studies, vol. 6, no. 2-4, 2023, pp. 105-112.
Leetsch, Jennifer. “Ocean Imaginaries in Warsan Shire’s Afro-Diasporic Poetry.” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, pp. 80-95.
—. “Opening Wor(l)ds: Warsan Shire and Shailja Patel.” Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing: Making Love, Making Worlds, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, pp. 199-259.
Lumsden, Roddy and Stonborough, Eloise, editors. The Sea Book of Young Poets. Salt Publishing, 2011.
Poudel, Uttam. “From Rhetoric to Reality: Warsan Shire’s “Home” and the Refugee Crisis.” The Informal: South Asian Journal of Human Rights and Social Justice, vol. 1, no. 1, 2024, pp. 85-92.
McCarthy Woolf, Karen, editor. Ten: The New Wave. Bloodaxe Books, 2014.
—. “Snapshots: Six New Voices.” Wasafiri, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010, pp. 7-18.
Obi, Uchenna Frances and Onyejizu, Raphael Chukwuemeka. ““No One Leaves Home Unless Home Is the Mouth of a Shark”: Dwelling and the Complexities of Return in Warsan Shire’s Poetry.” Journal of Critical Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 2, no. 6, 2021, pp. 1-6.
Okeowo, Alexis. “The Writing Life of Warsan Shire, A Young, Prolific Poet.” The New Yorker, 15 Oct. 2015.
—. “Warsan Shire’s Portraits of Somalis in Exile.” The New Yorker, 7 Feb 2022.
Ronzheimer, Elisa. “The Poem as Meme? Pop Video Poetry in the Digital Age (Warsan Shire/Beyoncé).” Word & Image, vol. 37, no. 2, 2021, pp. 152-159.
Shire, Warsan. “Araweelo Abroad x Warsan Shire.” Interview with Ifrah Ahmed. Araweelo Abroad 2 (2015).
—. Her Blue Body. flipped eye publishing, 2015.
—. Our Men Do Not Belong To Us. Slapering Hol Press, 2014.
—. Brave Girl Rising. Girl Rising/Documentary Group, 2019.
—. “Poet Warsan Shire: Love Who You Are” Interview with Aliecia Brissett. Urbanology Magazine, 2016.
—. “Q&A: Poet, writer and educator Warsan Shire.” Interview with Katie Reid, Africa in Words, 21 June 2013.
—. Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth. flipped eye publishing. 2011.
—. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head. Random House, 2022.
—. “To Be Vulnerable and Fearless: An Interview with Writer Warsan Shire.” Interview with Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Well & Often, Nov 2012.
—. “Warsan Shire Has Beef with Iambic Pentameter.” Interview with Anupta Mistry, Hazlitt, 4 Sept 2013.
—. warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely). Digital Album. Bandcamp. 14 Feb. 2012.
—. Your Family, Your Body. Penguin Modern Poets 3. Malika Booker, Sharon Olds, Warsan Shire. Penguin, 2017.
—. “Warsan Shire talks to Bernadine Evaristo about becoming a superstar poet: ‘Beyoncé sent flowers when my children were born’.” The Guardian, 26 Feb 2022.
Smiruthi, A. and Kala, S.J. “The Chiasmic Gaze in Warsan Shire’s Poem “Backwards”.” Asian Journal of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, 2023, pp. 148-155.
Zakaria, Rafia. “Warsan Shire: the Somali-British poet quoted by Beyoncé in Lemonade.” The Guardian, 27 April 2016.
