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| “I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are still together” - Warsan Shire |
Warsan is a Kenyan born Somali poet based in
London. She’s also one of my favourite poets alive and she’s only 23. ‘Teaching
My Mother How To Give Birth’ is the name of her first collection of poems.
Q1. Warsan, what’s more beautiful,
midnight or midday?
midnight because it is quiet
and all black is beautiful.
Q2. The poet is often perceived as a
tormented character, a lot of your poetry explores trauma. When you write are
you in a certain mood?
probably crying, but not
because i'm tormented or traumatised, but because something finally fell into
place.
Q3. You’ve started working with
script writing, how does a poet work on scripts?
I thought film was poetry?
Q4. True, ok, if a love poet, a political poet
and a preacher sat in a room together what would they talk about?
loss (my first answer was
brittany murphys death, i don't know about everyone else, but personally i
still have so many questions.)
Q5. You’re reading a set of poems at
Keats House on Sunday November 18th. What do you think makes a good poetry reading?
Intimacy, safety, relief
between poems in the form of inappropriate humour.
Q6. So there’s this genre of
poetry called ‘Spoken Word Poetry’ which has become quite popular… What’s your
take on ‘Spoken Word’ as a form of poetry?
when it's done well, it's so
good, so beautiful, that i die a little bit. when it's bad, i just want
to die. but that is true of most things, a bad cup of tea is tragic. a good cup
of tea is a small heaven.
Q7. I was teaching a year 10 class at school last week and I asked the class what they know about poets and a girl blurted the word “poverty!” across the room. What can up and coming poets aspire to apart from poverty?
Well, she had a point, you do
aspire to be poor, but also, to be so deeply fulfilled that sometimes, you just
sit with your face in your hands, in awe of it all.
Q8. Finally Warsan, did you tell your
mother she has a beautiful daughter?
She said you should come over
for Somali tea, Ray.
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| Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth |
DON'T MISS Warsan giving a reading of her poems at the Keats House Open Mic event on Sunday November 18th, 2pm - 4pm. (FREE)
Hampstead,
London, Greater London
NW3
Follow Warsan Shire on Twitter - @warsan_shire
Keep updated on her blog
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