One of the responses to Bob Dylan’s Nobel nomination was, “why not Warsan Shire”. Her performance, like Dylan’s, reminds us that poetry is not just for the page, but to be voiced, gesticulated.
I played the excerpt for Rundel on Thursday, Oct. 27, and sent it to O Pen as well.
Born in 1988, Kenya, Ms. Shire has grown up in London. In 2014, she was nominated London's Young Poet Laureate. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/warsan-shire
"To many readers, Ms. Shire’s clear voice in the online cacophony felt transformative."
Beyoncé (in a voice-over in the film, lines derived from Ms. Shire’s poem.
the unbearable weight of staying - (the end of the relationship).
https://warsanshire.bandcamp.com/track/the-unbearable-weight-of-staying-the-end-of-the-relationship
the unbearable weight of staying (1:34) (transcript below)
EUREKA
How different a smooth sound of a voice, try to follow one person's rhythms.
I will be talking Nov. 10 about Eureka and why it matters. It reflects discovery, and a borderline sense of joy one wants to rush out to share with someone.
Listening to someone's story doesn't produce "Eureka"... but talking with others about a poem or story will.
**
Here is a clip from Warsan... released February 14, 2012
"I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know, is no one I know has it,
My father’s arms around my mother’s neck, fruit too ripe to eat a door half way open when your name is just a hand I can never hold everything I have ever believed in becomes magic.
I think of lovers as trees … growing to and from one another searching for the same light my mother’s laughter in a dark room a photograph graying under my porch (?)
this is all I know how to do
carry lust around until I begin to resemble every bad memory every terrible fear any nightmare anyone has ever had
I ask , did you ever love me.
You say of course of course so quickly that you sound like someone else I ask you are you made of steel? are you made of iron?
You cry on the phone. My stomach hurts.
I let you leave. I need someone who knows how to stay."
**
Another short phrase of hers was perfect in expression shared with me by Carmin:
"I had to leave.
I felt lonely when he held
me"
Carmin mentioned how it might be interesting to read and discuss some of Bob Dylan's lyrics later in the coming year. She printed 5 pages from the Guardian, Thursday 13 October 2016 titled,
Are these the lyrics that won Bob Dylan a Novel prize? by Richard Williams and Alexis Petridis.
I put him in my Shakespeare talk yesterday with one picture next to these lyrics:
The guilty undertaker sighs
The lonesome organ grinder cries
The silver saxophones say
I should refuse you
The cracked bells
and washed-out horns
Blow into my face with scorn
But it’s not that way
I wasn’t born to lose you . . .
I want you, I want you .
— with the question -
Will we be listening to him 400 years from now? Would you take him with you on a desert island?
What experiences and discussions produce a sense of "Eureka"? Which stories pave the way for you to
the moment when "aha" seems to lift invisible but yet perceived impressions of veils?
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