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Warsan Shire

Souvenir

  • 1 Our Blue Bodies | Translations: de
  • 2 Souvenir | Translations: de
  • 3 The Ugly Daughter | Translations: de
  • 4 Midnight in the Foreign Food Aisle | Translations: de
  • 5 Nail Technician as Palm Reader | Translations: de
  • 6 Her Blue Body Full of Light | Translations: de
  • 7 The House | Translations: de
  • 8 Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre) | Translations: desv
  • 9 Backwards | Translations: de
Language: english
Translations: german (Souvenir)
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Souvenir

I think I brought the war with me
on my skin, a shroud
circling my skull, matter under my nails.
It sits at my feet while I watch TV.
I hear its damp breath in the background
of every phone call. I feel it sleeping
between us in the bed. It lathers
my back in the shower. It presses
itself against me at the bathroom sink.
At night, it passes me the pills, it holds
my hand, I never meet its gaze.

© Warsan Shire
From: unpublished
Audio production: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin, 2015
Categories: war, memory

Translations:

Language: german

Souvenir

Ich glaub, ich hab den Krieg mit mir gebracht
auf meiner Haut, als Flor
um meinen Schädel, Schmutz unter den Nägeln.
Wenn ich Fernsehen schau, hockt er mir zu Füßen.
Ich hör sein klammes Keuchen im Hintergrund
jedes Telefonats. Ich kann spüren, wie er im Bett
zwischen uns schläft. Er seift
mir unter der Dusche den Rücken ein. Er presst sich
vor dem Waschbecken an mich.
Abends reicht er mir die Pillen, hält
meine Hand, nie kreuzt mein Blick den seinen.

Aus dem Englischen von Ron Winkler
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Warsan Shire

photo © private
* 01.08.1988, Nairobi, Kenya
lives in: London, United Kingdom

Warsan Shire was born in 1988 in Kenya to Somali parents, she grew up in London, where she still lives. She won her first prize at an international slam event and is now the editor of the magazines Literary arts mashup and Spook. She leads workshops, in which poetry is used as a tool to try to overcome personal traumas.

Her poems have been published and featured in various literary publications, such as the Poetry Review, Magma and Wasafiri as well as have been  featured in the collections Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011) and Ten: The New Wave (Bloodaxe, 2014). Poems of her have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish and Estonian etc. 

 photo © private
Publications
  • Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth

    London: flipped eye, 2011

  • Our Men Do Not Belong To Us

    Prairie Schooner, 2014

  • grief has it's blue hands in my hair

    London: flipped eye, 2015

  • Her Blue Body

    Flap Pamphlet Series, 2015

Prizes
  • 2013 Inaugural African Poetry Prize (Brunel University)

  • 2013 First Young Poet Laureate for London

  • 2014 Queensland (Australia’s) Poet in Residence

Links
  • Warsan Shire @ Twitter

    Website
  • 'Music Warsan Shire writes to'

    Website

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