Image by: Uncle Michael Reynolds
Hi, my name is Mohamed “Mo” Sudi. I’m a Somali Australian writer, spoken word artist, community worker and lifelong student.
The chapbook is a multilingual collection of story poems that traces a Somali refugee’s journey from displacement to belonging, using language glossary itself as a bridge between cultures, communities and generations.
My project is called OZ Lingual: A Refugee’s Dictionary of Home.
It is a collection of communicated storypoems, monostichs/haikus and narratives that explore migration, language, belonging and identity through a multilingual micro-goggle lens. The book moves through different “word glossary doorways” such as Home, Birthright, shah tea, reset, community and language. Each piece mixes English with Somali and Arabic words, because that is how I honestly think, remember and tell stories. This project is important to me because I grew up moving across borders. I lived through displacement, refugee camps, multiple languages and calligraphy, witnessing the challenge of rebuilding identity in a new hope-survival country.
Many people know the word “refugee” as a label. I want to explore the human being behind that label tags: The son who remembers his mother’s lullabies. The student learning new languages. The community member sharing tea and stories (sheeko). The person trying to find home in more than one place.
I believe I am the right person to tell this story because I have lived it. My writing is not only based on research or observation. It comes from personal experience, community conversations, oral storytelling traditions, and years of performing spoken word around Melbourne open mics.
What makes this project different is that it treats language itself as a character. Words travel like refugees. Words cross borders. Words change meaning depending on who carries them. A Somali word can sit beside an Arabic phrase and an Australian expression, creating new ways of understanding one another.
If you’re wondering, why this project special? It’s because we live in a multicultural country where many people are translating themselves every day. This chapbook creates a bridge between communities. It celebrates cultural exchange while encouraging empathy, curiosity and conversation.
Ultimately, OZ LINGUAL asks a simple question in us: If language can travel, adapt and belong in more than one place, maybe people can too.
From “Asylum Seeker” to “As-Salamu Alaykum/job seeker!”, OZ Lingual explores how words, like people, cross borders in search of home.
