While the sectioning of her poems in such a way suggests a clear difference between or progression among them, Shire’s poetic style and the content of her poems are rather static until the book’s end. She missed an opportunity to create a diverse and dynamic narrative, her message of resilience within the immigrant experience lost within the monotonous series of poetry. Shire inverts the poem “Backwards,” forcing the reader to reorient themselves and their understanding of the piece. This being said, these poems are clearly meaningful, and readers can see the grace with which Shire attempts to navigate an inherently striking narrative.

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her 2nd collection that I have read by the author. In the poems “Drowning in Dawson’s Creek” and “Victoria in Illiyin,” Shire utilizes footnotes to tie the content of the poems to specific and devastating events. I have loved Shire's work throughout my 20s and now as I have entered my 30s, I feel so completely blown away by how timeless she has made herself. I also love how some known poems are brought in, but are given a new life and a new meaning in the context of the whole collection, a whole girlhood.That of the refugee "All these men between my legs, a gun, a promise, a lie, his name, his flag, his language, his manhood in my mouth. It was small, raw; it was pulling your heart out while you were marveling at the beauty of the words.

Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma and resilience from the award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire, celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King . In 2012 she represented Somalia at the Poetry Parnassus, the festival of the world poets at the Southbank, London. 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. 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.the boy you went to school with, who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory, is holding a gun bigger than his body. I’m sure I didn’t like the book as much as other readers, because I’m not that good in English, but I still enjoyed it to some extent. The influential and reworked poem ‘HOME’ lays bare the fallacy and social predicament of refugees; do they enter the western world to freedom? Warshan Shire is a young Kenyan-born Somali poet and this book is her 1st full length collection of poems.

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.

To say Warsan Shire’s first full-length poetry collection is ‘highly anticipated’ is an understatement. Thank you Netgalley and Vintage for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

But even Aabo was innocent once, as was Hooyo and the generations of Africans scattered by ‘the white gloved hand of Europe[. Children’ are ‘distant galaxies’ while father ‘hang[s] on the edge of the moon’, as unreachable as innocence lost.The poem implores empathy and understanding, and the tragedy is how many times the poem has circulated the internet because Shire’s words are the words needed at that moment of the news cycle. Some of the new poems were interesting but they all seemed like mirrors and weaker versions of Shire's old poetry. Positioning one above the other, Shire connects the sentiments of “I was an ugly child” to the sorrowful tale of when a mother “left the house and took her shoes. When I am cornered this one comes 'An animal standing on hind legs pretending to understand why it must die'. I have been a fan of Warsan before she worked with Beyonce' and have waited for this collection for so long.