Biography
"With you, intimacy colours my voice.even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'."
"Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel."
"You are terrifying and strange and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love."
"Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same."
"How far have you walked for men who’ve never held your feet in their laps?"
"I wrote the poem for them, for my family and for anyone who has experienced or lived around grief and trauma in that way."
"Warsan means “good news” and Shire means “to gather in one place”. My parents named me after my father’s mother, my grandmother. Growing up, I absolutely wanted a name that was easier to pronounce, more common, prettier. But then I grew up and understood the power of a name, the beauty that comes in understanding how your name has affected who you are. My name is indigenous to my country, it is not easy to pronounce, it takes effort to say correctly and I am absolutely in love with the sound of it and its meaning…"
"I still feel very homeless. I live in London and have been here nearly my whole life, but it is a difficult city to connect to. I have travelled around and found my body making more sense elsewhere. But I have started to understand what it feels like to belong, so I look forward to exploring different countries and seeing how fully I can feel at home in a place, that at the end of the day, isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before."
"My poems come to me in images, like film. I can see it very clearly and then this overwhelming urge to write out best what I just saw comes over me…"
"We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there."
"At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before."
"Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women, kitchen of love, bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy. Sometimes, the men, they come with keys, and sometimes the men, they come with hammers."
"You tried to change didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake... You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that."
"later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt?it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere."
"It's not my responsibility to be beautiful. I'm not alive for that purpose. My existence is not about how desirable you find me."
"The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do."
"Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat."
"His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay."
"all those nights with the phone warming the side of my face like the sun."