![]() Shire has already won accolades for her work. ![]() One cannot be a passive bystander in the reading of her work. She has spun beautiful and ethereal work from suffering – her work commands active witnessing. She refers to her parent’s dislocation, their mental health difficulties, her own mental health struggles, and also her experiences of being a young carer. Her father was forced to leave Somalia after writing about government corruption, and before the civil war broke out. Shire is a British Somali poet, born in Kenya and then living in the UK for most of her life. Knowing something of her context increases my respect for her work. They feel both ancient and contemporary, steeped in tradition but fresh, and startling in their perspectives. Shire writes at the intersections of girlhood, womanhood, faith, ethnic culture and being Black, and she does so with such skill and wisdom that it is hard to believe these poems have not existed in the world before. They make you look in consciously, and they speak in a way that demands truth telling and healing. These poems span huge themes of trans-generational trauma, forced migration, sexual violence, and grief. Her poetry compels the reader to engage with deeply disturbing topics. Warsan Shire’s first full length poetry collection is full blooded, searingly honest and richly observed. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.” Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror 2015. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Psychotherapist Judith Herman has said, “The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Khadija Rouf reviews Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire (Chatto & Windus in collaboration with Flipped Eye, 2022)
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