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

Product Information

While she does provide a glossary for the terms, having to jump back and forth while actively reading can generate a disconnect for certain readers. Italicised lyrics chime in a dichotomous weave of pain and suffering as Gloria Gaynor synthesises in our minds, ‘At first I was afraid, I was petrified[.

Drawing from her life and the lives of loved ones, as well as pop culture, news headlines and banter, Warsan untwines vivid, transformative details from the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. 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.In the poem, Jones gets blown up with titles such as “patron saint of the unapproachable,” creating a stark step away from the feeling of previous poems — one that creates an underwhelming close to the collection.

When I am cornered this one comes 'An animal standing on hind legs pretending to understand why it must die'. In “Drowning in Dawson’s Creek,” Shire uses the first-person voice of a murdered Somali woman, referring to “my carcass” and “my corpse. Albeit her technique seems the same: Shire is still drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines. It is absolutely astonishing how much emotion, intelligence, imagination, and truth Warsan Shire can get into one collection. Bless This House and Backwards hit me the hardest upon first reading, but I thought every piece was strong and I’m sure when I reread and the words have marinated longer, another will resonate with me even more.

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her 2nd collection that I have read by the author. And if you're then craving for more, go into this long-awaited full-length collection with the right expectations: lots of old poems reworked anew (sometimes for better, often for worse) but also some new ones that'll invite into a new world, one that Shire always manages to completely make her own. As I usually do with poems, I read them aloud to get a sense of the rhythms of the words and sought out a few online readings by Warsan Shire including ‘Home’ that in heartbreaking visceral images chronicles the experience of the refugee. which weaves together the themes of migration, womanhood, Black identity, and intergenerational collection that Shire is so singularly gifted at exploring. Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire.