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. Her poems deal both with these weighty subjects as well as more personal reflections about her family and her faith. I still think it a wonderful and heart-breaking collection of poetry about womanhood, refugee’s life, displacement, identity, war, love and death. In absolute awe of this mastery of language, poetry like this pulls your heart in a very dreamy way.

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. It feels weird that Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is Warsan Shire's first full-length poetry collection.Shire identifies the different ways in which the book may be read, commenting directly on the predicted experiences of her readers. 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. So much is contained in this passage and these words resonate throughout the collection, addressing themes of being Othered in a new place while feeling your past disintegrating.

With her first full-length, poetry collection, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice In Her Head, Warsan Shire electrifies. She also wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising highlighting the voices and faces of Somali girls in Africa's largest refugee camp.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. By dint of all those blessings and Shire’s sensitivity, the poetry in Bless the Daughter soothes, even while it picks at the scabs of the wounds that cause trauma. If you haven't read her debut chapbook Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, you will have heard of her as a collaborator on Beyoncé's Lemonade and Black Is King.

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.Dangers are everywhere, such as in a traffic stop where young people are compared to ‘ an animal standing on hind legs / pretending to understand why it must die. Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way is the fact that some of these old poems were altered slightly for this "new" collection – often for the worse. While Shire’s presentation of powerful narratives can draw a deep reaction from readers, her straightforward structure and often disconnected tone makes the collection feel incomplete. or the traumatised immigrant "She listens to the clamoring voices, oh how blessed she is, how proud they are, how all their hopes depend on her, how walahi, all their dreams lie at her feet. In “Drowning in Dawson’s Creek,” Shire uses the first-person voice of a murdered Somali woman, referring to “my carcass” and “my corpse.