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

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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. 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. when she saw how much you looked like him.In the poem "Birds", Warsan talks to her friend Sofia who tells her of her wedding night and how she used pigeon blood to prove her chastity. The poem has a humorous tone and shows the absurdity of this outdated practice of brides having to be virgins and needing to bleed on their wedding nights. After Sofia's husband saw the red sheets, he smiled and then "gathered them under his nose, / closed his eyes and dragged his tongue over the stain." That image, albeit weird, is also quite ironic because the reader knows that it's not Sofia's blood he's so lustfully smelling but that of a pigeon. Nonetheless, the poem ends on a bleak note, as Warsan views Sofia's newly acquired marital status as a form of bondage: "her arms fleshy wings bound to her body, / ignorant to flight."

I have no idea how and why I added this poetry collection to my TBR since I rarely read anything in verse. However, I am thankful it happened because I would have missed an extraordinary experience. I’ve never been more touched, saddened and humbled by any poetry before. Most authors that I tried left me indifferent. There were a few that I liked but nothing comes even close to what I felt while reading Warsan Shire. New realities of being constricted to a barren area with no opportunities nor chances of social progression would push my mother to seek out her father at about eighteen. She travelled to her birthplace of Venda, not speaking or understanding the language. A few years later she met my father, and then I was born – along with my younger sister and brother.

In the first poem of the collection, "Your Mother’s First Kiss", Warsan details her mother's first relationship to a boy of whom she later learns that he "raped women / when the war broke out." The poem is haunting because with each verse, it becomes clearer that his boy also raped her mother when she was 16. It ends with the chilling verse: Last week, she saw him driving the number 18 bus, In 2010 she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and one year later she released Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth, a poetry pamphlet. For her publication she chose flipped eye publishing, which publishes original poetry and prose on a not-for-profit model. This approach has allowed flipped eye to focus on developing new writers with potential, thus facilitating the emergence of truly unique literary talent. 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.

Mother’s Day is often depicted as a joyous celebration; images of doting daughters and caring mothers wearing matching silk pyjamas and drinking coffee in bed often visualise the event. I tore up and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. I'm bloated with language I can't afford to forget." What we never see, however, is how it makes some people’s minds fidget and hearts sink, including my own. For me, Mother’s Day is revisiting the five stages of emotional distress, yearning yet mourning the perfect mother-daughter relationship that never was. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-18 04:08:14 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40323823 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifierOcr 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 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. Sad people have the gift of time, while the world dizzies everyone else; they remain stagnant, their bodies refusing to follow pace with the universe. With these kind of people everything aches for too long, everything moves without rush, wounds are always wet.” 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.”

Un approfondimento e uno spaccato sul tema dei diritti civili, nelle parole di una giovane poetessa somalo-britannica. Silvia Mazzau: currently teaches English at a high school in Verona. She lived in Cambridge (UK) during her youth, worked as an interpreter and copywriter, and has 30 years of experience as a teacher in Italy. Together with her musical family, Missing Link, she created show-lessons which turned into a project, English or… Nothing!, born to involve students as musicians, actors, scenographers and dancers, using English as a means to learn while having fun. Here you can think of all the hurtful names you can call cancer, and it wouldn't stop killing. It wouldn't stop taking. Today is a good day. Today is a wonderful day - any day that starts out like this is. I found a house full of words. Bold, fearless, silky, abrasive, wounding words. Warsan Shire is a house full of words. Words that don't cuddle you, words that envelope you. There's a deep sense of melancholy to her words and quite a lot of her poems contain explicit content - which I have absolutely no qualms about. If you don't do bold and abrasive, then this probably isn't for you. But personally, I love the way the words burn, sometimes sweet and silky is just too much of that - sweet and silky. I think that's the beauty of poetry, the creeping subtlety of it's power is you never know which line will sink or float you, make or mar you. You never know which line you'll latch unto and cling to for dear life. I've always thought that poetry emphasizes the delicacy of words and maximizes it's full utility. Where books might be pretentious, extravagant or redundant with fine literary sounding words, I've always thought, in a way, poetry thrives on it. But that's not to say it needs it, simply there's love to be found even in those that prove tedious. Maybe I feel this way because I knew poetry before I knew stories and novels. Some poems in this are more of 3's than 4's but on average, I rated this a 4 because it was a really good collection.The summer my cousins return from Nairobi, we sit in a circle by the oak tree in my aunt’s garden. They look older. Amel’s hardened nipples push through the paisley of her blouse, minarets calling men to worship.” I don't get a chance to read a lot of poetry, but when I do it pulls at my soul. I stared at the cover of this slim but powerful book for a while. The imaginative and powerful image of a gun going through a woman is enough to think on how my own voice is muzzled by myself but also the environment I'm in. I love this poet and she conveys deep and powerful emotion through her writing. I first discovered her through a short youtube video, where images are added to her words. Found Here PDF / EPUB File Name: Teaching_My_Mother_How_to_Give_Birth_-_Warsan_Shire.pdf, Teaching_My_Mother_How_to_Give_Birth_-_Warsan_Shire.epub 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.

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. 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. 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. 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 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.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. in his bedroom?Again, Warsan just finds the perfect words to make this scene come to life. She tells the woman: "Your daughter's face is a small riot, / her hands are a civil war, / a refugee camp behind each ear, / a body littered with ugly things." Her history and the history of her people can be traced on the daughter's skin. The poem ends with the beautiful sentiment: "But God, / doesn't she wear / the world well?" 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.