Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head

By Warsan Shire
Poetry/Chatto & Windus/Hardcover/71 pages/$29.04/Available here 
4 out of 5

In 2015, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, a poem by the young Somali-British poet Warsan Shire made waves on social media.

In a widely quoted version, she writes: "you have to understand,/ that no one puts their children in a boat/unless the water is safer than the land."

The poem Home became a rallying cry for people to help the refugees and was even recited by British actor Benedict Cumberbatch on stage.

Shire originally wrote it for black immigrants who had fled during the Somali civil war, which started in 1991 and is still ongoing.

Home is one of 50 poems in Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head, her first full-length collection. Its pages are populated by black women, teenage girls, refugees and immigrants.

The pieces are at once mournful, celebratory and defiant. Their figures are painted in vivid brushstrokes. Consider the child bride in Buraanbur who feels "the catheter sting of womanhood" or the woman at the payphone in Dahabshiil Sends Blessings who promises to send money home.

Shire draws heavily on the personal as well, invoking her hooyo ("mother" in Somali) and her late friend Yosra.

Another poem was inspired by the real-life case of an Ivorian child who was tortured and murdered in a London flat. She is now, in Shire's imagination, "rewarded with 72 devoted mothers who delicately dry her small body with wool softer than skin".

Then there is Backwards, an exercise in wishful thinking. Events rewind like a film in reverse with the now-departed father "walking backwards into a room". A few lines later, "Mum's body rolls back up the stairs, the bone pops back into place".

This is poetry that has no patience for the obscure and no time to wrap itself in allusions. It is powerful because it cuts close to the bone. And it demands to be spoken as well as read.

Shire used to publish her poems online, rose to prominence through the microblogging platform Tumblr and collaborated with pop star Beyonce on her 2016 visual album Lemonade.

She writes with an immediacy, clarity and candour that will likely chime well with people on social media. But that is not to say that her work is shallow or simply the sum total of catchy sound bites.

The writing is nuanced and sharp, and has matured since her 2011 chapbook Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth.

This latest book deals with violence and rage, but perhaps what will live longest in the reader's imagination are glimpses of the tender and poignant.

I will not forget, any time soon, the sad time-skips of intimacy in Unbearable Weight Of Staying, or the dream, in Bless The Real Housewife, of a woman driving down a dirt road, "her braid coming loose in the breeze, the sun/lifting its skirt, a peaceful Somalia in her rearview".

If you like this, read: In Search Of Equilibrium by British-Nigerian poet Theresa Lola (Nine Arches Press, 2019, $21.81, available here), an unflinching study of death and grieving.