Which poet’s work is sampled in Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album Lemonade?

Warsan Shire’s poetry is sampled in Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album Lemonade.

The London-based Somali poet contributed spoken-word passages that appear throughout the visual album and its accompanying film. Her writing helps connect the project’s songs through themes of ancestry, intimacy, anger, grief, forgiveness, and renewal. The poems are performed as transitions rather than presented as conventional sung tracks.

Lemonade was released on April 23, 2016, after its visual film premiered on HBO. The project is organized into chapters with titles such as “Intuition,” “Denial,” “Anger,” “Apathy,” “Emptiness,” “Accountability,” “Reformation,” “Hope,” and “Redemption.”

Shire’s involvement is sometimes overlooked because Lemonade is commonly discussed as a music album or as a response to relationship strain. The project is also a literary and cinematic work, and the poetry is central to its structure. Shire later received the Young People’s Poet Laureate title from the London-based Poetry Library in 2014.