Danielle Reyes
Professor Sidibe
NEW 210
3/10/2019
Warsan Shire is a poet and activist born in August 1, 1988, Kenya and raised in London since the age of one by her Somali parents. She is currently under “ flipped eye” and is aswell the poetry editor of Spook Magazine and Literary arts mashup. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Creative Writing., a digital album called Warsan Versus Melancholy, has had her work featured in music such as Beyonce’s lemonade album and Benedict Cumberbatch “help is coming” charity single. She has been writing since the age of eleven and winning awards since sixteen. Some of the many she has won is the Brunel University African Poetry Prize and Young Poet Laureate for London. shire is known for her raw works in which give a voice to those who are usually kept silent such as immigrants , refugees and victims of sorts as well as discussing topics of love, past generations, cultural assumptions, birth, death, and much more . all her works poses an emotional depth which could reside in being that she has said in the past that most of her characters are the voices of people she knows or her herself. Saying “I either know, or I am every person I have written about, for or as. But I do imagine them in their most intimate settings.” Her work is very intimate which can be seen in poems like the one we have read this week “ The House”
The house is a poem in which i interpreted as the story of someone with a traumatic history of sexual encounters and the lack of actual stable love in their life. Throughout the story i did not get the feeling of her blaming the men , or so i couldn’t fully understand the piece to understand the tone, who left or barged in but more aloof almost as if this were normal( making jokes and such for example the knock knock joke). We are introduced to the ideas of the narrator’s inner rooms by the advice of her mother which can state in how the action is common. How she warns her daughter of the men with keys and the ones with hammers. The ones who were welcomed and those who force their way. In the second stanza we are introduced to a line in somalia“Nin soo joog laga waayo, soo jiifso aa laga helaa” which means A man who is missing, lying down. Then followed by the lines of “I said Stop, I said No and he did not listen.” this brings the idea of what rape does to the victim ,makes them lose a part of themselves , without giving the details of what had happened.
The narrator mixes in her encounters with those who have entered her house and telling others about the intrusions. We don’t get much info if anyone does react in a way that could aid the narrator, the only reaction we truly get was those of the party who do not see the turmoil in the statement she had said of how she is where love comes to die. Shire uses a lot of metaphors and similes in this work in which you don’t quite get where on the narratordan the room is placed but you know the feeling. The feeling of stuffing two fingers in a jar or a hand in a drawer. She writes in a way in which we imagine us become these inanimate objects that we use, abuse, and throw away. And i think that is the main story of the narrator that throughout her life she has been used, abused, and thrown away, at times the men did not enter for years or like jhonny forced his way through. These actions come and live with her in her home, they stay within her and leave traces of their footsteps on her floor. And events like these stay with the victims and can cause a catalyst of insecurities, lack of trust, and detachment. That even if they seem fine going out to parties and such the event is “always chained up in the basement with their fears.”
Questions:
!) why do you think shire used a house specifically to describe herself, and not something more visually similar to a human body?
2) in stanza V we are given the scene of the father on a dining room table stuffed with a red apple, what do you think the symbolism in that scene is?
