Sagal Farah - poet.
“I aim to create social awareness through my poems and write about issues such as immigration, youth knife crime, poverty and gender equality.”
As an individual of Somali heritage, poetry plays a huge role in Sagal’s family life too, as Somalia is known as the Nation of Poets. She has 8 generations of forefathers who were poets, including her father who writes poetry in Somali. Poetry is a way that she finds herself connecting more deeply to her culture and her family. Through her work, Sagal also tries to make her audience connect with her identity by shedding light on the injustices of being a Black woman, but also the celebratory aspects. She believes that it is crucial to discuss the many joys that come from a Black existence, as it can have detrimental effects on one’s identity complex and mental health when the focus always lies with one’s trauma.
Last Moments
and in those last moments,
I hope that he knew,
that his tears
would fall on our eyes too.
when your skin weighs heavy like a death sentence,
and your garments morph into a shroud,
when passed away becomes too soft of a phrase
to describe
how loud
knee dug
into neck,
bones cracked
to the left,
blood fled
out of flesh,
life crashed
into death.
on the days where your skin feels like excess baggage fees,
like an unfinished fight,
like a walking corpse,
on those days, I want you to know that
all they see is the darkness in your light,
and shame on them, for missing out
on the celestial beauty of the night,
you shooting star,
you supernova,
your death
only brings us more life.
so we take your gravestones out of the graveyards
and place it on our placards,
place it in our tongues, in our breaths, in our strides.
and in those last moments,
I hope that they knew,
that although their lives may be stripped from them,
we won’t let their names be hijacked too.