Houley Koundourou ’28, a double major in Writing and Political Science, recently won the 2025 Victor Howes Prize in Poetry, awarded on behalf of the New England Poetry Club. We spoke with Koundourou about poetic inspiration, her Senegalese ancestry, and the value of a women’s-centered education.
“I felt so assured and empowered,” says Houley Koundourou ’28, when she found out that she had received the first-place award for the 2025 Victor Howes Prize in Poetry. “For me, [receiving this recognition] was reassuring, in that I’m actually who I say I am [that is, a writer].”
Awarded on behalf of the New England Poetry Club, this prize honors an undergraduate student enrolled in a New England-based institution who has composed outstanding poetry. This specific award also commemorates Victor Howes (1923–2018), a former English professor at Northeastern University and longtime Club member who published over 600 poems.
“Most student writers have not had a chance to get their voice out there [via publications], so receiving this honor is like a stage for us,” Koundourou notes. “Since so many great poets, including Robert Frost and Amy Lowell, were members of this Club, it is so meaningful to feel their powerful legacy.”
Maternal Motifs in Poetry
In her award-winning poem, “My Mother Never Wanted to Be Mother,” Koundourou explores how “we are all complicit in the destruction of our mothers’ dreams.” Her poem reads as follows:
I could feel it as I was born, my mother never wanted to be mother. As my
first flesh home caved in on me elbows caught on organs,
the umbilical cord wound around my throat, her stomach grew hands,
clawed onto me, refused to let me go living. They had to bring every doctor
and therapist in the hospital to let me out. If I did not die by the placenta
installing itself as a lump in my throat, if not by the rush of the
amniotic fluid into my lungs, I think their pulling and
tugging would have quartered me into pieces. My shoulders still remember
the tightness whenever I am hugged, from her body’s last effort
to kill me in the same water I was born in.
I could feel it all come down with me,
not just the chord. I took the heart,
proper liver function, the waste
dreams leave in the mouth,
functioning knees, even teeth.
I felt myself shred her into pieces, felt my
body gut hers, felt birth echo through
her, felt that when she made life she also
made death, felt that everything that
she could have been was flushed down
along with me.
My mother never wanted a child,
never wanted to be
mother.
Eleven more trips to the birthing room, a hundred and ten finger-sized
notches in the doorframe to match. Spit crusted
around her nipples, they became so black by the
last time that you could not even see the marks
the bites left. Formula nurtured the last of us
when there was none of her left.
My mother never wanted
to be mother.
My mother never
was
again.
For this poem, Koundourou derived inspiration from her own mother, who grew up in a rural village in Senegal and has 12 children.
“Giving birth to and mothering so many children had a big impact on her, especially in terms of how little she could express herself,” Koundourou explains. “In my poem, I also include details about the physical effects of birth … For example, I talk about my mother’s nipples becoming black because so many children have suckled them over the years.”
To imagine her own birth, Koundourou exercised “poetic license.” As she continues, “I write about my mother’s body not wanting to birth me … I try to hold onto the violent aspects of my birth, and [acknowledge] what childbirth does to the bodies of our mothers … No matter the circumstances of your birth, you close a lot of doors for your mother in the very act of coming into the world. I express this through my poem.”
In general, Koundourou’s writing highlights the points of view of marginalized and low-income people who are often neglected by dominant power structures. “This framing is instrumental to my writing,” she says.
Channeling Self-Expression and Senegalese Ancestry
Koundourou began writing poetry while in elementary school. “Back then I felt that I could not communicate or socialize well with others in everyday conversation,” she recalls. After dabbling in writing novels, Koundourou found poetry to be a more liberating and expressive medium.
“Poetry gave me a type of visibility that I wanted to have in day-to-day conversation,” Koundourou explains. Her readers often comment on her “honest” and “authentic” style. “I become my [true] self when I am writing a poem,” she says.
Koundourou grew up in Columbus, Ohio, in a large Black Muslim family, and remains connected to her Senegalese roots. “Senegal is a kind of land of poets,” she says. “Our first President [Léopold Sédar Senghor] was a poet turned revolutionary … Our language is very poetic, which influences how I write poetry.”
Senegalese musical culture also influences Koundourou’s poetic compositions. During her childhood, she enjoyed Senegalese drummers performing at various parties and events. In middle school, she became a percussionist.
“I heard these rhythms and tried to incorporate them [into my writing],” she says. Accordingly, she molds her verses with repetition in the form of refrains, homophones (i.e., words that have the same pronunciation but different meanings), and reiterating similar sounds, thereby creating a rhythmic texture.
Women’s-Centered Learning and Faculty Support at Simmons
Attending a women’s-centered university was a natural choice for Koundourou. She attended an all-female middle school in Columbus, which she found to be a safe and generative learning environment.
“My fellow classmates and I had so much care and respect for one another,” she recalls. “In general, I learn better and have more productive conversations within a women’s-centered community.”
Double majoring in writing and political science, Koundourou links her personal passions with real-world readiness. “As a person who loves literature and poetry, this made sense to me … I am also interested in the critical thinking aspect of political science, which may open more doors career-wise for me [in terms of government or policy-related work],” she says.
In addition to being a full-time student, Koundourou has started to explore the cultural delights of Boston and engage in community service opportunities. She volunteers at Rosie’s Place, a shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness. “It’s a wonderful organization that helps people who are struggling,” she says.
In Spring 2025, Koundourou took “Creative Writing: Poetry” (LTWR 109), a workshop-style course taught by Assistant Professor of Humanities Patrick Sylvain.
“This was the first time that I was forced to write highly structured types of poems, like sonnets, pastorals, and pantoums,” she says. “Since I usually write in a more natural, free-flowing style, having to devise poetry that conforms to strict rules and structures has enhanced my ability to compose poetry … I felt that I grew as a poet this past semester.”
For one assignment, Koundourou and her classmates had to write a sestina, an intricate and complex poetic form attributed to the medieval troubadour Arnaut Daniel (1150–1210). “Professor Sylvain also gave us specific words to insert into the sestina’s six stanzas. One of them was ‘chowder,’ which was quite the challenge.”
Through rigorous coursework and faculty mentorship, Koundourou has learned how to harmonize individual expression with the “rules” of poetry. “You have to respect the form, while simultaneously free yourself from its confines,” she says. “It’s a delicate balance.”
Working with Professor Sylvain has been a powerful source of inspiration for Koundourou. “He is so involved as a person and educator, and is so knowledgeable and articulate,” she says. Furthermore, workshopping poems alongside her peers “made me think more about the palatability of my writing,” she adds.
Professor Sylvain sees Houley as a “poet of exceptional promise, with a rare combination of formal skill, cultural depth, and emotional maturity. That emotional maturity leads one to the encountering of truth, of essence, of the forging of one’s voice from the raw material of the lived experience. Houley writes with a commitment to homeland — not only as a geographic origin but as an emotional, cultural, and spiritual inheritance.”
Commenting on Koundourou’s chapbook that she submitted for his poetry workshop, Sylvain remarks that “Houley’s poems reveal a striking poetic talent marked by linguistic precision, rhythmic command, and an unflinching commitment to memory, identity, and homeland. In the first pantoum she wrote, ‘The Women I Am From,’ it displays not only technical skill but also a brilliant thematic cohesion with recurring lines that amplify the cyclical inheritance of matriarchal resilience, labor, and communal care. Simply put, Houley uses and offers language as both elegy and resistance.”
Simmons has helped Koundourou cultivate confidence in her writing. “In my classes, the professors always encourage us to put our work out there [to be considered for publication] … Professor Sylvain always talks about how he experienced so many rejections, but also so many acceptances,” she says.
Looking ahead, Koundourou aspires to be a professional writer. “I wish to continue writing, without the ever-present stress of financial insecurity,” she says. “Ten years from now, I would love to talk publicly about how my mom fueled my poetry.”
Above all, the craft of poetry has instilled in Koundourou the importance of remaining humble. “Having humility is so important as a poet.”