Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Shortlisted for the 2022 Felix Dennis Prize

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Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma and Poetry Review and in the anthology 'The Salt Book of Younger Poets' (Salt, 2011).

Somali-British poet, Warsan Shire draws us into the complexities of the transition from girl to woman, immigrant to citizen, in this, her much awaited and first full collection. I don't wanna sound like a drama queen but I'd been starving for new exciting poems by Shire – and this collection simply didn't deliver. But even Aabo was innocent once, as was Hooyo and the generations of Africans scattered by ‘the white gloved hand of Europe[. The poem has been used and gone viral during many refugee situations, and she has said in interviews ' I wrote those words for Black immigrants, and the most I’ve ever seen those words used was when the immigrants and refugees were lighter-skinned with lighter eyes.In “Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head,” Shire boldly weaves together a narrative of what it means to be displaced, disconnected from home, and incredibly vulnerable.

Albeit her technique seems the same: Shire is still drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines. Bless The Daughter Raised By The Voice In Her Head: Poems” (2022) is written by the multi-award-winning Somali-British author/poet Warsan Shire: who served as the first Young Poet Laurate of London where she was raised after resettlement. Bless the Daughter is published in a gorgeous hardback edition with the most beautiful end papers that I have ever seen – the folks over at Penguin Random House sure know how I love a good bright HOT PINK! Somalia is recognized for having the longest coastline on the African continent and is populated by over 16 million people. She asks so many questions that I ask myself all the time: especially when I think of loved ones lost, community members lost, the joys and pain of being a girl, a woman, a girl learning from a woman and then a woman of your own.Warsan Shire has perhaps not personally experienced the violences described (she came to the UK at one year old) but "I am the sin of memory and the absence of memory" we read. 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. So much is contained in this passage and these words resonate throughout the collection, addressing themes of being Othered in a new place while feeling your past disintegrating.