Warsan Shire talks to Bernardine Evaristo about becoming a superstar poet: ‘Beyoncé sent flowers when my children were born’ | Poetry

When an email from Beyoncé’s office first landed in Warsan Shire’s inbox, she assumed it was some kind of prank. It wasn’t. Beyoncé – the real Beyoncé – was inviting Shire, a 27-year-old British-Somali poet from Wembley, north-west London, to collaborate. The result was the revolutionary 2016 visual album Lemonade, on which Shire is credited with “film adaptation and poetry”; her verses are read aloud between songs. Shire has also since contributed work to Beyoncé’s 2020 film Black is King and wrote a specially commissioned poem, I Have Three Hearts, to announce the singer’s 2017 pregnancy with twins.

But even before Beyoncé came knocking, Shire was starward bound. After a responsibility-laden adolescence, spent combining writing with co-parenting her three younger siblings, Shire published her debut chapbook of poems, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth in 2011, aged just 23. In 2013, she was appointed the first Young People’s Laureate for London and in 2015, her poem Home became a viral anthem for the refugee crisis. Shire’s first full poetry collection, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, comes out next month. In between these professional milestones, she also found time to meet and marry a Mexican American charity worker called Andres, move continents, and have two children.

For the bestselling author Bernardine Evaristo, all this is a delight but no surprise. “Beyoncé chose to collaborate with Warsan because of the richness of her work,” she says. “It transcends these perceived barriers and boundaries around women’s experiences.” Evaristo was 60 in 2019 when she found her own global fame, by winning the Booker prize with her eighth book, Girl, Woman, Other. Evaristo’s route to the top had been slow and winding, so she determined to blaze a more direct trail for those who came after. With young talent exactly like Shire in mind, she initiated The Complete Works poetry mentoring scheme in 2007 (Shire was a mentee) and founded the Brunel International African Poetry prize in 2012 (Shire was the inaugural winner). This year, Evaristo completes her trek to the apex of the British literary establishment, by assuming the presidency of the Royal Society of Literature (the same august organisation that in 2018 elected Shire as its youngest fellow).

Now, on the occasion of the publication of Shire’s collection, she and Evaristo have come together to swap notes on their influences, ideal writing conditions and occasional bouts of impostor syndrome. There was a time when these two women would regularly run into each other at poetry readings and publishing events, but since Shire now lives in Los Angeles, it’s been a while. So when we arrive on the Zoom call – Evaristo from her airy, art-filled London living room and Shire from what looks like a hastily grabbed hiding place in the basement – they get immediately stuck into conversation. It’s full of laughter, mutual admiration and gratitude for the wonders of a life lived in literature. Ellen E Jones

Bernardine Evaristo There’s so much to ask you about your journey to where you are now – I mean, it’s just been incredible, hasn’t it? But maybe I’ll kick off with Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: how does it feel to finally have your first full collection published?

Warsan Shire I remember the advice you gave me, to take my time and not rush it. I think, starting off young, I wanted to make sure I didn’t burn out quickly and just release something that I wasn’t really proud of. Also, poetry was always linked to my mental health, as an outlet, so it feels very cathartic to finally let go of this collection. I was writing this book on the precipice of starting my own family. It feels really massive, like I went from a girl to a woman in the middle of writing it.

BE This is why you are a really serious writer, because you could have ridden the wave of Lemonade and put out a collection then, but you knew you wanted it to be the best it can be. I really respect that. I think many other people would have thought that if they don’t exploit the moment, it’s gonna pass them by. So, let’s go back to the beginning. Did you start off with Jacob Sam-La Rose’s Barbican Young Poets?

WS When I was about 15, Jacob came to a youth club where I lived, in Wembley Central. Because I raised my sisters, it was really difficult to get out, so I had to lie and do all these things to get to the workshop, and I got there a little bit late, stumbled in, but that’s how I met Jacob. After that day, my life was completely changed because I’d met a real-life poet. He introduced me to the works of really amazing Black British poets and writers, and then I was able to actually meet them. So that’s how I got to know Nii [Parkes, poet and co-founder of Shire’s first publisher, Flipped Eye], and that’s how my first chapbook came through.

BE That’s such a wonderful introduction to the arts, because you weren’t alienated from the material, y’know? Whereas, with me, when I was your age, it was all white. The struggle for me, as I grew older, was to find Black writers, Black theatre and, in the end, I had to create my own through Theatre of Black Women in the 1980s. The way in which you became part of the poetry community was through a kind of mentoring, wasn’t it? Through Jacob and Nii and then through Pascale Petit and The Complete Works, and it’s so important, when we’re coming from the kind of backgrounds that are underrepresented in literature.

WS There’s not a day that goes by when that’s lost on me. I can only imagine how you felt, because before I got to know these people, I thought that becoming a writer was as likely as becoming a Hollywood star. That’s why it’s such an honour to be speaking with you today, because people like you were the reason why any of us have any opportunity at all. I’m just so, so grateful! I hope that I can do something like that for younger writers as well.

BE Yes, I think that’s something else that we share. Even though writing is something that’s deep within us, we are still also about our communities. It’s not just art for art’s sake, is it? It’s about being a voice in the world as a Black woman. I mean, do you feel that responsibility?

WS I would love to speak to somebody who is from our kind of background, who doesn’t feel the responsibility, because how is that possible? I think whenever you come from a people who don’t have a voice, and you have a voice, how could you not? For those who don’t have to, that is wonderful. I mean, how great that you can write a poem only about garden gnomes and it means nothing other than the beauty of the garden gnome! Like, how gorgeous that you can do that! But also, I want to speak for people. Not only is it necessary and important, it’s also fun!

BE Yes, that’s right. It’s not a burden that we carry, is it? It is something that we embrace as really positive. But you see, I grew up in a political family. Both my parents were political activists. My Nigerian immigrant father was a Labour councillor and a socialist, my parents went on demonstrations … You also grew up with politics. I mean, you were in Britain because of the politics of Somalia, right?

WS Yes, and my mum has always been this natural feminist, even though she spent her life as a housewife and didn’t really get to go to school. She always relished seeing me be free. My family is a Muslim family, so at times when I would be told: “Hey, you need to wear a hijab,” it would be my mum who’d be like: “She’ll do it when she wants to.” So that just made me feel formidable. My dad’s a writer and he was the reason why we had to leave Somalia. He was writing this book about the corruption in the Somali government, there were threats and intimidation, and ultimately, we had to leave just before the war broke out. He was the first person that introduced to me the idea of being Afrocentric, pan-Africanism, and the history of Somalia. He made me feel really proud to be Black from a very young age. And he also put in me the importance of writing and sharing your stories. So that, mixed with growing up with the backdrop of a civil war – and constantly looking after and meeting traumatised family that had just come from war – all of that came together to create in me this urgency to write.

BE I remember you said years ago that everybody in Somalia is a poet: is that true?

WS Yeah, it’s very true. That’s why, when I met Jacob, I was like: “Oh, you can do this for a job?” Because, before then, in my home, I was around people just reciting poetry, all willy-nilly. We call it “gabay” in Somalia, and it’s used when a child is born, when somebody dies, when we go to a wedding, when you’re courting somebody, when you’re cursing somebody, when you’re beating your children – there’s something for every single activity in life. When I was born, my grandmother wrote me a poem about how one girl is better than a thousand boys, basically, because everybody wanted the first child to be a boy – y’know, sexism and everything – so, to counteract that, she wrote me this poem.

BE So you had the poetry, which was just part of everyday life, and then you had your dad’s politics, your mum’s feminism – I’m psychoanalysing you here, Warsan! And you’ve got the grandmother who says to you, “One girl is equal to a thousand boys” – I mean, how amazing is that?! In my case, it was a Nigerian father, and he spoke broken English, which I didn’t realise until I was in my late 20s, and I interviewed him on tape and then I heard it back. I think somehow that has affected me as a writer, because I do like capturing the vernacular with my characters. And then Catholic church, where I went every Sunday for 10 years of my life. Torture! But I was absorbing the rich, poetic language of the Bible. When I started writing, it came out as poetry and I always thought it was some kind of miracle, but actually, it was rooted in the church. I also want to ask another question about voices … With your book, to me it’s obvious that you’re drawing on all these different women’s experiences and it is, in a sense, poly-vocal. So can you talk a bit about that?

WS Yeah, definitely. I think it was sitting down and listening to all the women that came through my home, which felt like hundreds and hundreds. My mum is a big-time social butterfly so, from a young age, I was privy to these private conversations, which as I got older turned into these women talking to me directly, and nobody seemed to care about it being inappropriate, because I’m the eldest, so it was just like: “Oh, she can deal with it.” So I really heard about people’s private lives, people’s marital issues … I heard about the complications and consequences of female genital mutilation, things that people will not tell anybody else – especially from my culture. They knew that I was interested in writing and it was like: “Oh yeah, she’s gonna be a writer, so let’s tell her all our stories.” It was really, really sweet how they championed me, and I just wanted to honour that.

BE Sometimes I draw on people I’ve known, and I’m always really entertained [to discover] the people who don’t read my books, because I know that they might recognise themselves, but they don’t read the books! So I can say what I like!

WS Has anybody ever come to you and said please stop writing about me?

BE Oh yeah, I’ve been heckled! One of my characters was kind of inspired by somebody I used to know and they came to an event and started shouting out, having a go at me. And it was a really smart, prestigious event! That was the worst. But, as writers, I think we are ruthless, to a certain extent. Y’know, if you’re not somehow drawing on the people around you, then what are you going to draw on? I’ve just published a memoir [Manifesto: On Never Giving Up] and I really worked hard to disguise people. I had to stay true to the experience I had with them, but somehow obscure their identity. So, like, somebody might, for example, be living in America, but I maybe put them in the north of England.

WS Witness protection! You have to witness-protect your exes! There are some family members of mine that I just won’t touch, because I know that they’ll hunt me down.

BE Another thing that’s interesting about your process, I remember you telling me that you write while watching television? We know writers talk about their noise-cancelling headphones, and no distractions and so on, and here you are; I think you said you wrote in bed, watching television?

WS Yeah! These are the places that I write: I write in the cinema, in the loudest coffee shop in the world. I used to really love writing in Ikea, because it’s so loud. I love when children are screaming, so now that I have kids, it’s really inspiring! The more noise, the better! It’s because I was parent-ified from a young age and had to look after my sisters. I just had to get on with it. If I was gonna write, I was gonna have to write in the middle of three screaming children, in the middle of cooking and cleaning and doing my schoolwork and finding a little boyfriend in the street and hanging out with my friends. And I needed to do everything. I knew that I had all this responsibility, but I knew that I also wanted to be young while I was young, because I could see in my mother the repercussions of giving up your youth, and how it catches up with you later. So I was gung-ho about having all the experiences.

BE That’s really inspirational for aspiring writers, because the myth is that you need to have your own desk in a quiet room. And that’s not going to work for everybody! I grew up in a large family with eight kids, so it was a noisy household, but as a middle child, I didn’t have to take responsibility for anybody except for myself. I would retreat into reading books. I didn’t have a room of my own until I left home when I was 18. So it’s a class thing as well, isn’t it? Now, I want to move on to America. You abandoned us! You eloped with the Mexican guy. Explain yourself!

WS Maaaan … OK, so let me speak honestly: I think that sometimes you’re faced with this decision to either take care of those that you’ve taken care of your whole entire life, and sacrifice your life, in a way. Or you can make a choice – which is what I did – to, for the first time ever, put myself first. That was really hard. And also, y’know, I fell in love! I needed to know whether or not this was going to work. I didn’t want to look back on my life later and feel resentment towards my sisters. I didn’t want to feel like Miss Havisham, up in the attic, and be like: “I gave up everything for you guys!” I want them to have these amazing, bright, vibrant, fulfilled lives, but if I stayed I’d be resentful. I knew that could happen to me very easily because it’s happened to women in my family over and over again. Then what happened was that Trump became president shortly after I moved, and then there was the whole “Muslim ban” thing, and then the pandemic … So back-to-back stuff has happened, which meant I couldn’t travel. Although it seems like I didn’t want to come back, I really have missed London so much.

BE And then, Beyoncé!

WS So the Beyoncé thing happened very randomly, honestly. I opened up my email and there was one from Parkwood, which is Beyoncé’s company. I thought somebody was pranking me, but it turned out to be actually them. They thought I was in London, and I said: “Actually, coincidentally, I happen to be in LA right now … ” So it all happened very quickly. I woke up that morning, and that afternoon, I was sitting with Beyoncé listening to the album [Lemonade]. I grew up listening to Destiny’s Child and Beyoncé, so it was very surreal. I was very starstruck. I thought, finally, the mental health issue that my mum has always talked about on my dad’s side of the family had kicked in, and what a beautiful psychosis this is! Of all the ways to lose my mind, this is a great one. And then it turned out to be real. It was a really beautiful experience, in that she made me feel just safe and special. She was very, very kind to me and she’s really sweet – she sent me flowers after the births of both my children – but yeah, then I just went back to writing. I don’t really think about it much.

BE That’s because you’re so grounded. It hasn’t gone to your head. But I think it’s testament to your work, that she chose you, out of all the poets around. You write with such empathy and compassion that your work transcends these perceived barriers and boundaries around women’s experiences. You write beautifully about loss and displacement, the bond between women, and these are all things that women around the world can relate to. I think this book will have incredible global reach. Your work is not depressing; even though you are tackling some really serious subjects, it’s uplifting. I think that’s a really special skill.

WS Thank you! It means so much coming from you, you don’t even know.

The conversation turns to Shire’s 2009 poem Home, which became a viral sensation around 2015, when Benedict Cumberbatch recited lines from it as part of a charity fundraising single in response to the Syrian refugee crisis: “No one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark.”

WS I remember when I wrote that poem, it came from visiting Italy and meeting some Somali refugees who lived in the old, abandoned Somali embassy there. There was no electricity, no running water and a young man had, the night before, jumped to his death from the top of the building. I was seeing first-hand, and hearing straight from the people who were experiencing it, how difficult it was to be a refugee or an immigrant. So that poem came out of that. I think it was André 3000 that said: “Across cultures, darker people suffer the most, why?” And so I think it’s really great, obviously, that this poem has spread far and wide, but it’s not lost on me that it only started to get traction when the refugees in question had lighter skin from those that I was speaking about to begin with. That said, obviously, the best thing that could happen is that your work is used, not only to raise awareness, but to raise funds. I get contacted by synagogues and churches all over the world [wanting to do that]. I do think it’s really odd, that it takes all that for people to understand how hard it is to be a fucking refugee! You have to really, really drum it in! And although it’s a beautiful thing that everybody can come together to connect with these words, and have more empathy, the downside of it is that whenever I see it’s being shared, I know it’s because something really horrible has happened, like all these people have just drowned.

BE Obviously, that poem is so powerful and so quotable, but I think a lot of your poetry is quotable, actually. I think that’s one of its strengths. It’s complex and multi-layered, and can take rereading, but at the same time its reach is beyond poetry readers.

WS People say quite a bit: “I don’t really like poetry, but I like your work.” I, personally, really love poems that are difficult to get into and take time to understand. I think, though, maybe what’s making it accessible to those who aren’t that interested in poetry is that I’ve always felt like I’m a writer who’s not very academic, not very intellectual. When I hear other writers speak, I would feel like: “Oh, OK, I must be a hoodrat, because I can’t speak that way!” So maybe some of that goes into it. I don’t know. I think class has always been something I’ve been very aware of and, at times, has made me feel like an impostor, because I don’t sound like how I imagined a writer would sound.

BE I want to pick you up on this idea that you’re not intellectual, Warsan, because you are! But we’re brainwashed in this society to think that unless you were privately educated and went to Oxford and draw on certain literary or cultural references, then you are less sophisticated, less intelligent, less cultured than those who have gone through that system. I have had that. I don’t have it any more because I do what I do and that’s it; I am myself. You are most definitely yourself, and the way you write, your process, your cultural references are valid and true to who you are, and that’s the most important thing that we can be as writers. Your communication is incredibly effective.

WS Oh, thank you. You gave me a therapy session there! I really appreciate it. You’ve worked really hard to create space in publishing and literature for Black and non-white writers. I know you’ve done so much to make it possible for our voices to be heard. How does it feel to see the needle move just a little tiny bit?

BE Y’know the needle has shifted quite a lot, actually. Right now, it’s quite … I don’t want to use the word “fashionable”, but certainly I think publishers want to have diverse lists now and before they didn’t care. Now there are so many new writers coming through I’ve lost track, whereas before I knew literally everybody. So it feels really good. But what I’m really interested in, at this stage, is that people should have long careers. I don’t want us to find that in 10 years’ time, there are only, like, three writers remaining, continuing to publish … What is the scene like over there? Are you reading American writers?

WS No, to be honest I haven’t stayed on top of it … The last book I read was The Republic of Motherhood by Liz Berry and then before that it was Jay Bernard’s Surge. I still drink PG Tips. I watch Gogglebox, I still watch EastEnders. I have started a deep love affair with Karl Pilkington, who I listen to every single night before I go to sleep. It’s really important for me to remember where I come from, y’know? My nightmare is to get an American accent.

BE Which you haven’t got, so that’s OK.

WS No, listen, I don’t speak to Americans! The only American I speak to is the one I’m married to.

BE And Beyoncé!

WS Oh yeah, and Beyoncé.

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is published on 10 March, at £12.99, by Chatto & Windus in collaboration with Flipped Eye. To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Warsan Shire will be appearing at the Women of the World festival at Southbank Centre, London, on 12 March. Buy tickets here.