Immigration Poetry as a “Call to the Fortunate” : A Reading of Warsan Shire

Abstract

Immigrant/Immigration Literature, as a genre, has been around for many decades. Sigrid
Loffler, a distinguished German critic, while speaking at Lit.Cologne (2017), a prominent
literature festival of Germany referred to this genre as “new world literature” and said it’s
important to lend a structure to this particular brand of English literature. She also spoke of
the “generational shifts” pertaining to the difference in the themes in the writings of different
generations of writers, starting from the “problems to settle and integrate into the new
countries” to the “mystery of arrival” and then themes which are “no longer poverty-driven”.
Nevertheless, the displacement and rootlessness and finding ways to survive in a hostile
environment owing to unfamiliarity of land, language and culture essentially remain the
themes of these writings.