Warsan Shire is the first young poet laureate for London. Born in 1988, Warsan has read her work extensively all over Britain and internationally—including recent readings in South Africa, Italy, Germany, Canada, America and Kenya.  Her début collection, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth (flipped eye), was published in 2011. In 2013, she won the Inaugural African Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published in Wasafiri, Magma, and Poetry Review and in the anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt, 2011). She is the current poetry editor at SPOOK magazine. Her poetry has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, and Estonian. She curates and teaches classes around the art of healing through narrative and poetry. Warsan is also the 2014 Queensland, Australia poet in residence.