Hunger, adultery, murder, and rape feature heavily in this extraordinary volume of poetry. This is strong and heady stuff, and I have only given relatively tame quotes so far. The first boy who kissed your mother later raped women This union between eros and tanatos recurs throughout the volume – take this opening line of a poem: In an earlier poem, “Fire”, the metaphorical fire of sexual passion is replaced by the literal fire of a betrayed woman who sets fire to her husband and his mistress. ‘when the men come, set yourself on fire’ The final poem of the volume entitled “In Love and in War” unites the themes of love and death most obviously: Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth combines tales of female sexuality with tales of violence. A great bargain, if you ask me – even though the book is very slim and takes only a moment to read. I think the two reasons above should be reason enough for me to acquire a volume of her poetry, especially as it was available on .uk for only £4.
Here’s Warsan Shire reading an earlier version of the “Conversations about Home ” aloud, if you haven’t heard it yet.
More recently, I came across Warsan Shire’s poem “Conversations about Home (at the Deportation Centre)” – one of the most moving accounts of the plights of refugees – and Warsan Shire is a refugee herself. I came to hear of Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth because Beyoncé used Warsan Shire’s poetry in her music video to Lemonade (for an example of Warsan Shire’s feminist poetry – check out this video ) Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet living in London.
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