SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Somali women’s poetry was largely played down by the male-dominated society and little study that specifically analyses the poetry of Somali women has been taken. In this dissertation, I will present a literary analysis of some of the poems by Somali women. I will look at three types of poems in particular, which are the Somali lullabies, poems about their relations with men, and poems about political and social issues. I intend to engage with the poems by Somali women closely to investigate the relationship between the language use and the messages in the poems to discover how the women poets make their voices persuasive and rhetorical. I shall also bring in this analysis to the discussion of the genre of Somali poetry and the status of women’s poetry judged by the elite men. I will demonstrate how and why Somali women’s poetry is by no means unsophisticated or less important than poetry by men, which I hope will provoke further discussion about rethinking genres, status and impact of Somali women’s poetry in the gendered world.