KENYA: Meet the Kenyan-Born Poet Who Played a Major Role in Beyoncé’s Visual Album 'Lemonade'

Beyoncé’s will undoubtedly be one of her most talked about projects of her career let alone 2016. Lemonade as she titled it caught everyone by surprise and was a complete example of artistic expression.

From the spoken word interludes in the visual album to the actual songs, it was a work of perfection all the way through.

Meanwhile for those of you who are watching Lemonade for the umpteenth time now, probably because of those dark but moving spoken word verses and not just the music, there is something that you may not have known about the author of that beautiful poetry.

Warsan Shire is the Kenyan-born, Somali-British poet that wrote the poetry recited by Beyoncé in the visual album and was among the many people that were credited at the end of Lemonade for their amazing contribution in the project.

However this is not the first time that Queen Bey has sampled the work art of a great but relatively unheard of artist, in her 2013 song Flawless she sampled Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED Talk speech titled “We Should All Be Feminists,” from then on the Nigerian author rose quickly becoming a household name and even having her speech published as a pretty little book.

Meanwhile it is of no doubt that many of Beyoncé’s fans or the ‘Bey-hive’ as they call themselves will no doubt flock to sample the work of the 27-year-old Ms Shire  who despite being relatively unknown was London’s first-ever Young Poet Laureate in 2014, having published her first book of poems, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, in 2011.

Her work has even been translated into several languages, including Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

And knowing us Kenyans we all like to notice all people doing great things in the world that have Kenyan roots, so it would not have been fair if we did not mention Warsan Shire.  

SOURCE: Vogue