WARSAN SHIRE

Sex in the afternoon is a live literature tour commissioned as part of Wellcome Collection’s national Sexology Season featuring four celebrated writers. Straight from the lip, the writers share their own poetry and prose, exploring and exposing sex in all its joy, pain and glory.

Warsan Shire is a writer, poet, editor and teacher. Born in Kenya in 1988 and raised in London to Somali parents, she has read her work extensively as an internationally touring poet. In 2014 she was appointed the first Young Poet Laureate for London. She holds a BA in Creative Writing, her book ‘Teaching my Mother How to Give Birth’ was published with flipped eye in 2012. 

Her poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Wasafiri, Magma, and in anthologies ‘The Salt Book of Younger Poets’ (Salt, 2011) and ‘Ten: The New Wave’ (Bloodaxe, 2014). In 2013 she won the Inaugural African Poetry Prize and in 2014 she was selected as Queensland, Australia’s poet in residence. 

Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Estonian and Swedish. She is the poetry editor at SPOOK magazine and teaches workshops internationally and online: using poetry to explore memory, voice and heal trauma.

Filmmaker, Zayna Daze
Written by Warsan Shire
Starring Yusra Osman
Narrated by Zainab Soulaimani
Paris, France 2012.

‘Excuses For Why We Failed At Love’ is the first instalment of a three-part short film series by Zayna Daze and Warsan Shire.

Warsan Shire – For Women Who Are Difficult to Love

Director, Producer : Andrea Cortes-Juarbe & Christine Mehr

Editor: Christine Mehr

Co-Editor: Andrea Cortes-Juarbe

Special thanks – Lauren Stanton, Sara’o Bery, Ada Pinkston, Isa Nakazawa

Audio mashed by Christine Mehr

Instrumental track – Zoe Keating’s “Sun Will Set.”