Janine Milne
A Literature and Creative Writing graduate from University of South Africa/UNISA. Janine Milne's poetry has appeared in Sol Plaatje European Poetry Award anthologies and Stanzas. She won the 2026 Bridgette James Poetry Competition as well as the 2017 MacGregor Poetry Prize. She has published short fiction in Short Sharp Stories, Bloody Parchment, and Lemonwood Quarterly.
Janine emailed us to say:
Thank you and the esteemed Chinua Ohaeto so much for this great honour. You have no idea what this recognition means to me. I have had such a hard time lately, and this news has honestly been a godsend.
The Etymology of Homesickness
COPYRIGHTED
Janine Milne
Once, they knew homesickness
that bloody fist of longing—
could kill you.
They diagnosed it as nostalgia
from the Greek words nostos, returning home,
and algos, pain. It had a place in the medical books,
an illness that could bring feverish dreams, palpitations—
imagine it, labelled in ink:
a hypochondria of the heart.
Once, it was a malady of soldiers, rootless
on savage soil, their bodies a Babel,
torn by the razor wire of exile.
Now, this returning-home pain
is no longer listed in the medical texts.
It’s a sigh over a snapshot,
A melancholy for the bodies you once filled,
lovers good as buried—
But not for all of us.
Not for those born feet first from the stars
and flung headfirst into planet Earth,
on an orbit that only moves us further
out. Strangers to their native tongue,
betrayed by inchoate longings,
like an accent no one can place.
I’ve been outside of my life for years.
These are not my people,
though their language is mine,
Like a changeling,
I remain strange to their knowing.
When I say go, I mean don’t leave me.
Where is my cure for this?
Give me my opium, leeches,
my warm, hypnotic powders
to cure me of the look in your eyes
that says I don’t love you anymore—
I do not know you.
Save me from this lonely gyre
a cureless ache that unspools me, endlessly,
from belonging.
Watch Janine Milne reading her poem
Praise for Poem - Judging Panel
‘The Etymology of Homesickness’
I’ve been outside of my life for years. Indeed, soldier, indeed. Is the poem moving? Yes, it is. Its weakness is a near-sentimentality. Perhaps that is its best feature.
–Pamilerin Jacob
What a glorious poem. I like how it explores the etymology of words to talk about displacement and ostracization. Does homesickness no longer kill you?
–Bridgette James
This poem transforms nostalgia from a historical diagnosis into a profound meditation on alienation, identity, and emotional exile. Its imagery and phrasing are compelling. The poem’s movement from collective space into a confession is handled with remarkable control.
–Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto