The voice of the speaker is often frustrated by a lack of action. The broken home of the speaker parallels the broken homes on national levels. The small scale event of a parental separation has wide-reaching consequences: heartbreak which will inform the rest of the volume. It reads: I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes on my face they are still together. This indicates the primary themes to follow: family, love, homelessness, and by extension hints at the other prevalent concerns of sexuality and diaspora. The pamphlet begins with an epigraph which contextualises the poems within a subjective and personal experience. This pamphlet is an arresting exploration of the lives and struggles of those displaced by war, and women. The lines from ‘Home’ appeared in an earlier poem in her pamphlet Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (flipped eye, 2011). Shire has a large tumblr and twitter following, and in 2014 she became the first ever Young Poet Laureate for London. She writes, ‘No one leaves home unless home unless/ home is the mouth of a shark.’ Shire’s words ring with a truth which she doesn’t let you forget. It is no wonder that she has proved so popular with a generation of young people who are becoming increasingly politicised. In response to this, across social media, many users shared lines from ‘Home’ by British-Somali poet Warsan Shire.
All too predictably this caused a widespread panic, and was linked to the rise of far-right wing parties in Europe. In September last year the mass movement of refugees, from Syria to Europe, was widely covered in global news.
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