Brief intro for the poet and poem:
Warsan Shire was born in Kenya to Somali parents and lives in London….Shire wrote “Conversations about home (at a deportation centre)†in 2009, a piece inspired by a visit she made to the abandoned Somali Embassy in Rome which some young refugees had turned into their home. In an interview, she told the reporter that “The night before she visited, a young Somali had jumped to his death off the roof.†The encounter, she says, opened her eyes to the harsh reality of living as an undocumented refugee in Europe: “I wrote the poem for them, for my family and for anyone who has experienced or lived around grief and trauma in that way.†This poem became the basis for “Home†(from https://www.facinghistory.org/standing-up-hatred-intolerance/warsan-shire-home).
Instructions:
For your work on the poem, you will be comparing two different versions that Shire published. I want you to look at five differences and discuss the effects of those differences. You can use bullet points.
The changes that you talk about can involve:
1. Word choice
2. Images
3. Deletions and additions
4. The structure of the poem (shorter stanzas, longer stanzas, skinnier stanzas, thicker stanzas)
5. Anything else you note.
The second poem includes a racial epithet. Refer to it as “a racial epithet.”
This is the first version of the poem; Poem #1: https://www.januarytwenty.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Home-Poem-by-Warsan-Shire.pdf
This is the other version of the poem that we will be looking at, Poem #2: https://www.amnesty.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/home-by-warsan-shire.pdf
In each of the bullets:
1. Quote Poem #1 or describe the difference.
2. Quote Poem #2 or describe the difference.
3. Explain the impact.
Here is an example:
• In Poem #1, stanza #4, which has to do with running “home/chased you, and stanza #5, which has to do with never going back “tear[ing] up the passport†are separate. In Poem #2, these two stanzas have been put together. The first version has a greater emotional impact. Make us suffer fully in the running. Then make us suffer fully, and separately at losing one’s homeland.