The yearning for a place where one belongs, whether literal or metaphorical, is almost as universal as the fear of death or the yearning for love. 

A home can be a physical place of abode, distilled to architecture and geography: a grandmother’s hut, an idyllic suburban garden or a chaotic house of hunger. Yet other homes still are metaphorical and linked rather to people and feelings.

While we all desire safe and eternal homes, the home in chaos is a good point of departure for discussing belonging as seen in Marechera’s iconic House of Hunger which served as both a statement of discontent and an indictment against the colonial government’s housing policies.

As the world becomes increasingly globalised, we meditate too on the phenomenon of the Zimbabwean diaspora, especially since our recent history has seen more immigration than other periods in Zimbabwean history. What does it mean to stay vs to leave? Is there a difference between the experiences of a Zimbabwean in Nketa vs a Zimbabwean in Manchester? How do their conceptions of home differ?

Is it fair, too, to link our sense of belonging or comfort in our loved ones? While Somali-British poet, Warsan Shire, posits, “You can’t make homes out of human beings someone should have already told you that”, poems that cast family members and lovers as bastions of belonging are valid too.

In the second issue of Ipikai, we are seeking poems about home and belonging, poems about brick houses and cardboard shacks and a mother’s embrace and the stark cold of homelessness.

You’ll find the submission details here.

Tariro Ndoro
Editor
Ipikai Poetry Journal

IPIKAI ISSUE 2 HOME & BELONGING

Submit Your Poems

Submission information and guidelines are available on the submit page.