| The poet’s new collection melds verse and reportage to capture voices of the Somali diaspora.  Photograph by Tracy Nguyen for The New Yorker Warsan Shire is best known for collaborating with Beyoncé on the visual album “Lemonade,” but her poetry first became popular on Tumblr, more than a decade ago. She started writing poetry when she was twelve, after being moved by the moral ambiguity of Chinua Achebe’s poem “Vultures,” “which contains a passage about a Nazi officer giving his children candy,” as Alexis Okeowo writes in a profile of Shire in this week’s issue. Shire writes to and for her readers, who are often immigrants, refugees, and people who have experienced a sense of alienation. One of her most popular poems is “For Women Who Are Difficult to Love,” which she wrote in ten minutes: “you can’t make homes out of human beings / someone should have already told you that / and if he wants to leave / then let him leave.” Shire has felt a sense of frustration at how she and her poetry are sometimes perceived—reporters have asked her if she could rap. In 2017, her poem “Home” was quoted on signs and read aloud during protests of Donald Trump’s ban on travellers from Muslim-majority countries. “I wrote those words for Black immigrants, and the most I’ve ever seen those words used was when the immigrants and refugees were lighter-skinned with lighter eyes,” she tells Okeowo. “Obviously, you want your work to be used in any way to raise funds for all suffering people, but I want people to know who I wrote that about.” Read the story. —Jessie Li, newsletter editor | 
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