The inaugural Young Poet Laureate for London in 2013, Warsan Shire is a British-Somali poet born in Nairobi, Kenya, and raised in London. She received the inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize in 2013 and was named Amnesty International's first artist-in-residence on the 2015 European migration crisis. Her debut pamphlet, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (flipped eye publishing, 2011), preceded her contributions to Beyoncé's 2016 visual album Lemonade and the 2020 film Black Is King. Her first full-length collection, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head (Random House, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Who was your "gateway poet," the poet whose first book or poem made you want to write?
Warsan Shire. In high school, I listened to her read the poem "How to Wear Your Mothers Lipstick" and something in me changed. I was amazed at how her words could be heavy and yet her voice could be so soft. Then I read her poem "Backwards" and was amazed at how she could give the same words a different context simply by how she ordered them. The duality of her voice and work at large made me fascinated in figuring out how to capture the same magic through my own words and ideas.