Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire

Her physical presence, too, drew audiences in.

That’s when other publishers started to get interested in her work, when the bookstores started calling.” “People were saying her name all over the place. Shire’s clear voice in the online cacophony felt transformative. Shire reading her poem “for women who are difficult to love.” Christine Mehr, a San Francisco digital content creator, shot an impressionistic short film featuring Ms. In 2012, she recorded the spoken-word album “warsan versus melancholy (the seven stages of being lonely” and posted it on Bandcamp.

My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”Įarly on, Ms. My name makes you want to tell me the truth.

Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. One of her most-quoted prose poems is “Difficult Names”: “Give your daughters difficult names. They pulled out lines and posted them on their own blogs. In elite London poetry circles, the initial reception was underwhelming, Mr. Shire’s poetry to be featured in “Lemonade,” and kept the collaboration secret for several months - even from Jacob Sam-La Rose, Ms. Shire’s publisher, helped handle permissions for Ms. Nii Parkes, a founder of flipped eye, Ms. London poets “have been bowled over by Warsan’s collaboration with such a huge star, which, of course, was a big secret, so we had no idea this was happening,” said Bernardine Evaristo, a British writer and professor of creative writing at Brunel University London. Shire’s friends, colleagues and fans, “Lemonade” was a pleasant surprise. Shire declined to be interviewed for this article.)įor Ms. Shire’s and Beyoncé’s official tour photographer, had served as an early link between the worlds of the young British poet and Queen Bey. On Tuesday night, she finally published a tweet with a link to “Lemonade” and the note “yosra i hope you’re proud of us.” Yosra El-Essawy, a friend of Ms. She did not promote “Lemonade” or even tease its existence on social media. In the days after her work was proclaimed by one of the world’s most influential black female artists, Ms. Her first full poetry collection, “Extreme Girlhood,” is expected in the next year or so. In 2014, she was appointed the first Young Poet Laureate of London. Shire has published chapbooks of poetry - including “Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth” in 2011 and “Her Blue Body” in 2015 - but much of her reputation was built online by publishing on Tumblr and using Twitter like an open notebook. And her international following, captivated by her quiet charisma and compulsively shareable lines, may be as devoted as the Beyhive. Shire with “film adaptation and poetry,” may catapult her to a new level of pop-culture fame, but she is already known to many as a compelling voice on black womanhood and the African diaspora - one particularly resonant in the digital age.

Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire