When Beyoncé’s Lemonade premiered, not only did the unapologetically black and female hour-long video album launch a thousand thinkpieces dissecting its meaning, it also drew attention to Warsan Shire, the 27-year-old Somali-British poet whose words are laced throughout.



Who is Shire? reporters asked. The answer: a poet with thousands of devoted Twitter followers, and a strong voice within the African diaspora whose work – of displacement, loss, healing, belonging, and growing up – has chimed around the world and is particularly relatable in this digital age.

Yet the UK is also home to many other young Somali-British poets keeping the lyrical oral tradition of their ancestors alive. BuzzFeed talked to five of them about their love of poetry, what it means to them, and what it means to have connections to Somalia, the “nation of poets”.

