You can write about garden gnomes, or you can write about the divorce you just went through. You see poets like Sharon Olds who, because she writes about her life, is labelled a confessional poet. K: There’s probably quite a bit there in terms of another stereotype, that of English Literature as reserved, as the art of the indirect – but that isn’t part of your craft. But – no, actually – I’m completely normal! Often it’s an unknown measure that is being applied to me.Īnd most of my work is not about me anyway. There’s this stereotype of where you’re from and what religion you are and what culture you come from: I’m often perceived as quite outspoken for somebody who comes from my kind of background. But it’s difficult to see yourself the way other people perceive you. Those adjectives depend on whoever is writing about my poetry and what they would feel safe about sharing. Warsan Shire: I wouldn’t call what I write vulnerable or brave or raw, or any of those adjectives that are prescribed to it – I’m just writing. Katie Reid for Africa in Words : Your work is often talked about in terms of its braveness and vulnerability… Six of Warsan’s ten winning poems, ‘What We Have’, ‘Beauty’, ‘Your Mother’s First Kiss’, ‘Things We Had Lost in the Summer (on FGM)’, ‘Maymuun’s Mouth’, and ‘Ugly’, can be read on the Prize website here. Warsan is also the unanimous winner of the 2013 inaugural Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.īorn 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. In 2012 she represented Somalia at the Poetry Parnassus, the festival of the world poets at the Southbank, London. She is the current poetry editor at SPOOK magazine.
Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma and Poetry Review and in the anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011). Warsan’s début book, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (flipped eye), was published in 2011. Her poetry reads as both artistic and activist practice, documenting stories of journey, trauma and sexual violence, alienation, assimilation, transformation and recuperation. Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. Q&A: Poet, writer and educator Warsan Shire Home › Conversations with - interview, dialogue, Q&A › Q&A: Poet, writer and educator Warsan Shire
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