Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Mouthmark): 10

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Home itself becomes the speaking voice in st. 8, telling its people to “ leave, run away from me now” because it is no longer the place they grew up in, the land they belong to. The conclusion is a bitter one: “I dont know what I've become but i know that anywhere is safer than here”. This was cutting. From the title, I think it's fair to say that one knows what to expect from this poem. In this, the speaker's voice is cold, calm and resigned, but underneath that you can detect the anger. Anger at their misfortune. Anger at being run out of their homeland because of something so globally stripping as violence and war. Most of all, they're angry at being turned into a refugee - a symbol of superfluity. My god, Warsan Shire writes beautiful poetry! And I mean it when I say that. This is beautiful poetry. Brutally beautiful. Did you tell people that songs weren’t the same as a warm body or a soft mouth? Miriam, I’ve heard people using your songs as prayer, begging god in falsetto. You were a city exiled from skin, your mouth a burning church.” Tell me this does not remind you of all the refugees that have fled and are still fleeing from Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, Cuba, Mexico, China…

I glow the way unwanted things do, a neon sign that reads; come, I still taste like someone else’s mouth.” This is a slim debut chapbook of vivid, visceral, violent poems by a U.K.-based writer of Somali heritage who has already achieved widespread fame despite her young age (you may have seen her work featured in Beyonce's Lemonade). I was first drawn to her work some months ago after reading her poem "the birth name", which advises readers to "give your daughters difficult names.... my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right." (that poem is not included in this chapbook, however). I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going, where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the shame of not belonging, my body is longing.” Poet, activist, editor and teacher, Warsan Shire is a spoken-word artist whose poetry, usually performed publicly, connects gender, war, sex and cultural assumptions, giving a voice to the displaced and acting as a healing agent for the trauma of exile and suffering. Her best known poem, Home, has touched a nerve among people and helped understanding of the refugee crisis.PDF / EPUB File Name: Teaching_My_Mother_How_to_Give_Birth_-_Warsan_Shire.pdf, Teaching_My_Mother_How_to_Give_Birth_-_Warsan_Shire.epub Themes from the poem connected to an action of the UN Sustainable Development Goals N.10 Reduced inequalities, Goal N. 5 Gender Equality and Goal N. 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions with examples What your mother told you after your father left -- Your mother's first kiss -- Things we had lost in the summer -- Maymuun's mouth -- Grandfather's hands -- Bone -- Snow -- Birds -- Beauty -- The kitchen -- Fire -- When we last saw your father -- You were conceived -- Trying to swim with God -- Questions for Miriam -- Conversations about home -- Old Spice -- My foreign wife is dying and does not want to be touched -- Ugly -- Tea with our grandmothers -- In love and in war

I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I'm bloated with language I can't afford to forget." This collection is actually pretty good. I can see what Warsan Shire is saying...but she isn't saying it to me. I really felt a few of the poems but most washed over me. It rarely got physical, but the emotional wounds grew gangrenous as years went by especially because every part of my body got sensitive to the words and behaviour. I stopped attempting to confide in her. The sense of being unable to trust the woman whose body formed me added to my depression. I felt mentally displaced, as if I was navigating the world without a GPS.

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I was casually strolling by one of my friend's profile when I stumbled upon a poem. And it's titled For Women Who Are Difficult To Love. After reading and rereading it, I hopped on to Youtube to find a reading of it. And I did. I listened to it, again, and I fell in love with it, all over again. I can't tell you what I felt while I listened to it, it was like food to my soul. And those last lines...simply eye-watering and strengthening. So, Hayat didn't really recommend this to me directly, but I feel like she did and I'm so grateful for finding this poem(and writer) through her. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-18 04:08:14 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40323823 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier The poetry I read is a bit of a mixed bag. I have collections by Rabbie Burns, Edgar Allen Poe, Banjo Patterson and e.e.cummings. I like what I like but there is poetry which I know is great that really doesn't do anything for me...Allen Ginsberg for example. Poetry is difficult, almost impossible to review. It's actually tempting to not review this collection of poems, to not rate it. My favourite poems are Things We Lost in the Summer, Birds, Ugly and Old Spice, but the greatest impact have the short pieces of prose labelled Conversations about Home (at the Deportation Center). Each piece reads like a protest, an outcry, like a way to give the thousands of immigrants and refugees a voice to tell their story. In our current political climate many people see refugees as a (terrorism) threat and refuse to give them a chance, but Shire's words cut so deep that you can’t turn a deaf ear to them.

The last stanza made my heart hurt. I know war and I know violence, but rejection - that's something I can't pretend to understand.

Warsan Shire is one of the poets I was hoping to get to during National Poetry Month and I received two collections through interlibrary loan. Book Genre: 21st Century, Adult, Africa, Contemporary, Cultural, Eastern Africa, Feminism, Literature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Race, Somalia, Womens Like all great poetry, multiple readings come out of Shire’s words. I like to think of the fire as a metaphorical flame of individuality. When the invaders come, set your hearts ablaze and remember who you are; remember your culture; remember your language: remember you. When the men come do no lose this sense of you to the superimposing of another’s beliefs. Become angry, fight against it, rage at the injustice and learn how to beat it. But at the very root of it all, never ever forget. In such an idea Shire establishes the authority of the individual’s voice. If my mother contracted and died of the virus, I would not be able to forgive both myself and her for not working through our relationship”, I thought. My psychologist tried to counsel me into not jumbling funeral scenarios before they happen but it all fell on stone. Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-1200076 Openlibrary_edition

This poetry collection is perfect for those that have experienced these events, but it raises enough questions for those that have not and simply wish to know what others have had the misfortune to experience. For those worried they will feel like aliens when reading about events unknown to them, this will not do such a thing, it will instead draw the reader in, verse by verse. Through Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth the empowerment of women becomes like a burning tempest kindled up by the rawness of Warsan Shire’s words. The poems are also about reality, the horrors that some people have to face in a word driven by war. They carry with them such human depth, none more so than the poem In Love and In War. I know how hard it is to reach a safer heaven, I know the extent parents will go for their children, and when I see people being harassed for simply getting here in pieces, I wonder if it was better to risk their lives for a dream that might only keep them at bay but never will let them reach it. My mother would grow to erase the memory of her biological mother, adopting her grandmother as her mother, the amnesia ran deep that she referred (and still) to her mother by her first name. On the occasional holiday visits her mother would pay, the relationship grew corrosive and volatile, with shouting be the normal mode of communication. All of these issues are woven into this very slim book of poetry. And somehow, Warsan makes it work. The collection doesn't feel overburdened by its themes. Rather, it feels urgent and crucial. Like I said before, some of the poems were extremely hard to read and elicited very visceral emotions from me. I had to shut my eyes, I felt like vomiting. It made me angry at all of the injustices and horrors that the women in Warsan's life had to face.

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urn:lcp:teachingmymother0000shir:epub:1fc95e84-d426-4d7c-8739-827a05a04a8e Foldoutcount 0 Identifier teachingmymother0000shir Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s21d8ssmzjd Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781905233298 I had sleepless nights because hoping she does not die before I would never be able to buy her a first car, fill her cupboards with Tupperware and Table Charm, or have a spa date while wearing pink pyjama sets. Un approfondimento e uno spaccato sul tema dei diritti civili, nelle parole di una giovane poetessa somalo-britannica. These poems hit hard. I could only read one or two poems at the time because I had to stop and think about it, to let the feelings sink in. stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth upon your body one second; the next you are a tremor lying on the floor covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return.”