Sometimes, a piece of home lands on the tip of your tongue
as it dissolves into smaller pieces of digestible joy –
Savory pronounced as pundu or chikwanga.
Other times, home is a language that your heart yearns for
but never learns how to speak,
Entangled in the mystery of Bolingo.
In some occasions, home is held close and firm
in the form of an auntie’s liputa
Before you could ever grow into the shape to wear one around your waist.
There are moments where home appears in the gaze of others,
Often so clear in vision,
You could grab it with your own hands and embrace it with your lips.
Its walls were made of Nzambe
‘Fore it was erased by all traces on earth.
Laurène Southe
is a 24-year-old writer based in Vienna, Austria of Congolese descent. Beginning at the age of 17, Laurène would attend the Vienna African Writers Club led by African Studies of the University of Vienna, building a strong passion for poetry. It was in 2021, however, after a spoken word performance at the African Diaspora festival in Klagenfurt that she chose to take this practice full-time. In 2022, Laurène took part in a group exhibition titled ' An Der Schönen Blauen Donau' to prove that poetry could both be performed as much as displayed. During the Vienna Design Week last year, she had the pleasure of performing as part of her second group exhibition 'A Home is Not a Home' by curator and mentor Tonica Hunter. Perhaps her fondest moment was when she attended a writer residency at Echo Correspondence until the end of year 2023 and completed her first full-length poetry book titled 'Child of Congo' which she plans on publishing this year. As of late, one of her poems was published by Brittle Paper. IG handle: @laurenesouthe. Website: https://www.laurenesouthe.com.