If You Like Lemonade, Kohl-Rimmed Eyeliner, and “velvet darkness expanding”
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire
VIOLETS’ PICKS 006
Where I found it
I started to discover, though it wasn’t surprising in hindsight, that many musicians have an affinity for poetry either as writers themselves or readers, though there is, I realized, debate usually among poetry experts, as to whether or not lyrics count as poetry. (Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016, the first time in history a musician won the award.) See: Useless Magic. Enter Beyonce, Queen B herself—who I recently learned, is pretty much the only person on the planet allowed more creative control over their own Vogue covers than most-powerful-person-in-fashion Anna Wintour; even Gwyneth Paltrow famously had to reshoot hers four times over three years because Anna did not approve.
So of course, when you learn that Beyonce featured poetry in not one but multiple albums, you remember the names she mentions. Then, when you are in the middle of suburbia British Columbia in a place you’ve never been before, and you come across the town’s bookstore and said poet’s name is there when you’d never noticed her before, you take it home because you started collecting a new book of poetry for every trip you go on—that, and two other books, a 500+ page tome on the world’s smells and an astrophysicist’s memoir. You in this story, by the way = me.
First impressions
The cover is bold and graphic, a black and white illustration of a woman on the cover with one hand resting on her chin holding up her face. I can’t tell if she’s meant to look pensive or sad, or dreamy, or perhaps a combo of all three (I almost want to say, she looks like she’s just “over it”), something like the Mona Lisa if she were on the cover of a poetry book written by an award-winning Somali-British poet in the 2020s and not in the 16th century by an Italian renaissance man. The title is long, something I’m getting used to and enjoying after getting a bit too used to one-word minimalist titles like “Butterfly” or “Rainbow”—Oh hello, Mariah.
They Said It
With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. In Shire’s hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life, full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life, full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed.
-From the publisher
If someone from another planet wanted to know what it was like for a woman to survive on earth, they should read this book.
-Pascale Petite, author
Warsan Shire is an expert sculptor. She molds words into clay, her poems into statues—each one a wonder I return to, in reverence.
-Vivek Shraya, author
Line to Remember
She unfolds a small silk scarf, to catch a tear, were it to fall As dictators fall. -From “Bless the Ghost”
I can write the poem and make it disappear. I’ll rewrite this whole life and this time there’ll be so much love. -From “Backwards”
A flower, blossoming out of the hole in my face. -From “Nail Technician as Palm Reader”
Velvet darkness expanding. -From “Glitter on the Mouth of Boys”
You might like this if…
You’re a Beyonce stan (Is this too obvious? I mean, why not just start with the obvious?)—or at the very least, you appreciate Beyonce’s legacy as a musical artist and cultural force and are kind of curious what she’s into. You’re utterly addicted to social media and can’t stop from swiping, and you need something to pull you out. (Buzzfeed, y’know, the company that would do anything for the quick-hit click, said this of these poems: This is a collection that merits slow and careful reading. The irony is appreciated and very much welcome!) You want to break open, feel tender, be raw in the world not just a person behind a screen. You are an immigrant or a daughter, or know someone who’s an immigrant or a daughter. You have a body and a heart. You play with eyeliner and glitter, reminders that your body is yours and you are utterly alive. You aren’t expecting references to 1999 Britney and Grace Jones and reality TV in poetry, but you’re looking to be surprised—though brace yourself not to be delighted and instead ignited in the smoky aftermath of loneliness, trauma, and injury.
This was the colour of…
Smoke, all kinds of smoke. Smoke to conceal, to fade, both the aftermath and the signal. Pinks and reds, from flesh to “gargled rosewater” pink. A smattering of blues, like deep sea and space where sorrow stretches infinite. “Disco ball heart” and astronaut-suit silvers. Glittering gold. Camel milk. Pitch black. Stark white, bright white, so much white, “the language of white suburbia”. The orange and peaches of nectar and turmeric, still full of life and flavour after the smoke fades, before it finds its way back again.
Details
Year: 2022
Author: Warsan Shire, who collaborated with Beyonce on Lemonade and Black is King
Location: Nairobi → London → Los Angeles
Publisher: Penguin Random House
You’re reading Violets’ Picks, where every Sunday I take you through an adventure brought to you by a poetry collection. Here’s some other Violets’ Picks this month you may have missed:
