Artikel
let's learn from the trees
First Amharic-English anthology
17 juni 2020
Mekdes Jemberu
Mihret Kebede
Liyou Libsekal
Seifu Metaferia
Zewdu Milikit
Tagel Seifu
Alemu Tebeje
Kebedech Tekleab
Misrak Terefe
Mekdes Jemberu is a popular Ethiopian poet and founder of the Ethiopian Women Writers Association. In the late 1990s, she helped to organise an anthology of women’s writing entitled Egna (We). Her poems contain many gaps, as her words struggle to emerge from silence, from the traditional woman’s place in society. They bear witness. They tell us how difficult it still is for a woman both personally but also culturally to express herself.
The home I left behind
My home has blackened
like a cloud
repeating everything I did . . .
piling dirt on dirt
until the grime infects my eyes
gaps in floorboards . . . corners stopped
with beautifully knitted rugs
but hiding thorns and caked with dust . . .
my old home . . . you I left behind
hated and abandoned . . . refused to look at . . .
you who I denied . . .
you go on calling . . . answers I held back
have formed an edge . . . grown teeth
that click as they approach me now . . .
piercing my raw skin with memories
an empty hill . . . the creaking hull of you
suspended there . . . calling my name
a shabby tent that mocks me . . . brings me back
unrests me sensing my exhaustion . . . the contrite
state that I have reached . . . you who rocks me
back and fourth . . . the hill and pit and you. . .
cracked earth . . .a valley gorge . . . a cave
to hide myself inside . . . the slope and steep
where we assembled and discussed . . .
laid bets . . . argued . . . you who pulls a dagger
made of steely sorrows . . . sticks it in my side
I am a woman born from my regrets
I am loud with them . . . I cannot shy away
there is no logic in the things I took for granted
trivial as childs’ play . . . a sudden noise . . .
my tolerance and patience pilfered . . .gone
now my broken home . . . you rebuild yourself
while the marriage I neglected mocks me . . .
I will always be in labour . . . feel my pain
increase as time goes by . . . a death row prisoner
weaker as the days tick by . . . homeless leftover
of withered charms. . . lethargic
my old home . . . you blacken
like a wave retreating . . . rising and receding . . .
you swagger all around me . . . wrestle me
and draw your flashbacks on my eyelids
throw your grit into my eyes . . .
you punch me . . . you floor me
Mihret Kebede is a young and fiercely energetic artist and poet, co-organizer of Addis Video Art Festival, a founding director of Netsa Art Village and Tobiya Poetic Jazz, the hugely popular monthly poetry and music event at the Ras Hotel in Addis Ababa. She is currently a PhD-in-practice program candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and she brings a collaborative, experimental, cross-cultural approach to her poetry too, which is fresh and exciting.
Tales about silence
This poem is an act which is the opposite but also the same as Mihret’s poem.
Stability and change are all mixed up in it.
This poem exists through what it says, it is the thing it asks when it asks: My dear, my city, why are you so silent?
This poem speaks about Menelik the king, about gold and ideas, butter, pride and milk.
This poem leaves the out-of-tune, the history of itself out, it does not allow silence in, it takes silence up.
This poem calls to all citizens, female and male, she or he.
This poem is itself a city, a tale, which pleads for words, for the lost, to build on truth: with roads, houses, chickens, freezers, hands and the soft moon, with evening light and teeth, tongues, fences and injera. This city broods, watches out, it asks the voices, why are you so quiet?
This poem is full of love.
It rests on sounds, gutturals, a warm vocal and many many I’s.
This poem is Addis Ababa, is Ankara, Athens and Jakarta, but also Vienna.
It is not ashamed, it carries the gold of what it says.
This poem acts like butter, cream, milk, with filtering and shaking, freely shaking up and out and round, shaking awake and after and before, it is full of full shakings – this poem asks about kings like big ideas. It makes a king out of voices. It makes powerful, makes power.
It acts out of the act of silence.
This poem is not quiet.
(This is the last stop so far on the poem’s journey from Amharic translated into English by Nebiy Mekonnen & Eric Ellingsen, then from English into German by Rike Scheffler, then back into English by Chris Beckett)
an intimate exile ስደተኛ ቅኔ
‘ a personal lament, a collective grief ’
space is shapeless
place is a fiction
and fiction is a fact,
sadly.
with a thought you triumph,
in a battle you don't take part
in a solely grief,
geography is just a graph.
ቦታ ቅርጽ የለውም
ስፍራም ልብ ወለድ ነው
በባከነ ሀሳብ….ባልዘመቱበት ድል
በብቻ ቁዘማ …..በብቻ ድልድል
ሀገር ካርታ ብቻ …. ካርታም ያው ምስቅልቅል
የሀሳብ መስመር ላይ ….ሀሳብን የሚጥል !
I am in exile!
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ
ግዞተኛ ቅኔ
space is shape less
a thought is space less.
in an affair I roar,
in a plot I matter,
in a play I function
I am in exile.
on the verge of the river,
a thirsty fish in water.
in a short distance
in a breath away,
a breathless dense air.
I am in exile!
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ
ግዞተኛ ቅኔ
በገዛ መንደሬ
የተሸለምኩ መጥኔ
ትንፋሽ እያጋራሁ …..ትንፋሽ ያጣሁ ቅኔ
እያለሁ የለሁም
አልታያችሁም ?
with a breath that binds us,
with a scarce hope to come
in a short distance,
in a nearby vicinity,
I am in exile!
can't you see me?
እያለሁ የለሁም
አልታያችሁም ?
I am in exile
in my own city
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ …. በገዛ ሀገሬ
በገዛ መንደሬ
ስደተኛ ቅኔ
a sibling to my dream
a stranger to a brother.
a distance between us
is a distance among us.
your lineage
is a misconnect,
my thought line
is inadequate.
before I am expelled,
I am a mis-placed
I am a mis-played
can't you see me?
አልታያችሁም ?
ለቤቴ እንግዳ
ለወንድሜ ባዳ
ከስደቴ በፊት….. የተሰደድኩ እኔ
ቦታዬ ላይ ሆኘ …..ቦታ ያጣ ጎኔ
ሀገሬ ላይ ሆኘ….ህብር አልባ ቅኔ
ግዞተኛ ቅኔ
I am in exile (climax) 2
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ
ስደተኛ ቅኔ
on the verge of the river,
a thirsty fish in a water.
in a short distance
in a breath away,
in my own city
in my own city
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ በገዛ ሀገሬ
በገዛ መንደሬ
ስደተኛ ቅኔ
ቦታ ቅርጽ የለውም
ስፍራም ልብ ወለድ ነው
በባከነ ሀሳብ….ባልዘመቱበት ድል
በብቻ ቁዘማ …..በብቻ ድልድል
ሀገር ካርታ ብቻ …. ካርታም ያው ምስቅልቅል
የሀሳብ መስመር ላይ ….ሀሳብን የሚጥል !
I am in exile
I am in exile
Can’t you see me?
በገዛ መንደሬ
የተሸለምኩ መጥኔ
ትንፋሽ እያጋራሁ …..ትንፋሽ ያጣሁ ቅኔ
እያለሁ የለሁም
አልታያችሁም ?
I am in exile!
Note: this poem is dedicated to all individuals and groups marginalized in the name of cultural and social hegemonic beliefs. It is a conversation between Amharic and English language with the same concepts slightly differently expressed in parallel. It can also be experienced in spoken and danced form on video
Liyou Libsekal spent her childhood traveling around East Africa with her family, then moved to the United States to attend George Washington University where she obtained a BA in Anthropology in 2012. Her poetry explores themes of home, identity and displacement and her pamphlet, Bearing Heavy Things, is included in the African Poetry Book Fund’s New Generation African Poets series. Her work has been included in Missing Slate Magazine, Badilisha Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review. In 2014 she won the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Liyou lives in Addis Ababa and writes her poems mostly in English.
Gospels I live in a bed of days and paper between the threads of a greying sweater strands of yarn raveling out. I’ve never been far from my gospels. Hours weave, and I collect words a graveyard of pens and discarded notes. I am slow moving and unholy. I sink in the discomfort wear it in like this old sweater frayed and ill fated. I am fragile in this disorder.
Hair
I left Africa carrying my skin
and my father’s thick ringlets
braids were for children,
tussled locks for grown women
eleven and unaware
a black child in a white playground
learns new words
girls flock to touch a tamed head
weaved by loving hands
and chemical cravings set in
It’s your crown says my mother
whose gorgeous mane gets wrapped tight
rolled ready for feverish waves
that convert to straight
what a word
Seifu Metaferia is a fearless older writer, poet and professor at Addis Ababa University, pioneer of research into oral literature including children’s poetry in Ethiopia. There is a thread of humour and compassion in his work, a focus on humble individuals, which humanise his steely-eyed explorations of truth and power. His much-loved collection of poems, Wistet, is titled with Seifu’s made-up word meaning “the deep inside”.
Longing
But for having nothing to peel
I would always be
peeling…
uncovering
life’s little cells
and knots
sorting its peripheral parts
from the core
even that it has substance and form
this too
such intimate knowledge
insights
into the swirl of the living, intricacies of diversity!
Measurement
How did you keep them
once you bought them,
these house slaves,
these beings under your feet,
these measurements
of your importance?
A world created by the powerful
They say “come here!.go there!”
with a gun
to emphasize their words
“just drive me, please!” they say
mixing polite and threatening
because they like to blur distinctions –
the powerful
yes, life itself is a cold draught
but once upon a time our earth was ours
one unit, whole
not cut up in a thousand pieces
not spoiled like she is now
before things got so messed up
she was just herself
and hugged us all no matter
if our skin was black or white
Zewdu Milikit lives and works in Gondar, the ancient capital of Ethiopia north of Lake Tana. He is a lecturer at Gondar College of Teachers’ Education and is passionate about the craft and traditions of Amharic poetry. His poems are playful, aphoristic, suggestive, firmly in the tradition of Wax and Gold.
Our journey
It was a long wide road
and we set off together,
just you and me,
walking up that long wide road
wider than a country,
long as modern history.
After many days and months
and a full bucket of years,
you said, “why don’t we stop?”
and the place you said this
looked a lot like
where we’d set off from.
My silly stomach
So I can feel how big he is,
he starves my fingers,
leans my toes
and fills my chest with feathers.
He even shrinks my skull
into a little gourd and boasts
he is by far the best
of stomachs in the world,
stands there pleased as punch
to be a silly paunch.
Tagel Seifu is a witty prolific novelist, poet and performer who published his first book of poems and short stories, Fiker (Love), at the age of 16. I love the titles of his collections, as well as the poems, for example Kefown Atinkut (Do not touch the beehive) and Yesedom Fitsame (The end of Sodom). Thre are many YouTube clips of him reading his poems to great acclaim.
Ab/sil/ence
Is the sign in the library crazy,
asking us to be silent here?
Doesn’t it know these shelves are dizzy
with books just waiting to scream?
Books which any visitor can open up
and let explosions out?
Our ears prick up, our hearts go thump
at what is coming up the throat.
Signs should not call for crazy things!
Silence is absent here.
Child of the sycamore
We who were cut from its trunk
toppled from its crown
gathered and chopped to little pieces…
we as dry as its dead branches
raked up with its leaves
thrown on the hot coals and burnt to ash…
kitchen stoves take us
in their fiery hands
before they blow us away…
but if anyone asks: who are you?
we still reply,
I am a child of the sycamore
[this poem is for Mushe Semu and his open, wide-ranging, revolutionary world outlook which I have known for 25 years]
Alemu Tebeje is an exiled Ethiopian journalist, poet, lyric writer and human rights campaigner who lives in London, close to Grenfell Tower. He runs the web site
www.debteraw.com and his poem 'Greetings to the people of Europe!' was projected on public buildings in Denmark, Italy, USA and UK by Jenny Holzer in 2017.
Greetings to the people of Europe!
Over land and sea, your fathers came to Africa
and unpacked bibles by the thousand,
filling our ancestors with words of love:
if someone slaps your right cheek,
let him slap your left cheek too!
if someone takes your coat,
let him have your trousers too!
now we, their children’s children,
inheriting the words your fathers left behind,
our bodies slapped and stripped
by our lifetime presidents,
are braving seas and leaky boats,
cold waves of fear – let salt winds punch
our faces and your coast-guards
pluck us from the water like oily birds!
but here we are at last to knock
at your front door,
hoping against hope that you remember
all the lovely words your fathers preached to ours.
O, Western Democracy!
I praise you,
who takes us to Gleneagles
in a warm coach,
so we can stage our protest
against the butcher of Ethiopia.
You drop us by an empty field
two miles from the hotel,
so even though the Butcher cannot hear,
we are free to hurl our slogans
into the wind:
“Political plurality!” we shout
“Human Rights!” we cry
The sun is low and it is rather cold.
Policemen stamp their boots.
Some crows hear what we say
and look surprised, they undertake
to carry messages into your conference
where every beak laps up
the sweetness of your words,
jabbing at your shortbread promises.
So in the dark I praise you,
for your glistening motorways
of free expression,
your empty fields and willing crows,
for the dry biscuits you feed to monsters.
Kebedech Tekleab is a poet, painter and sculptor who had to flee Ethiopia in 1979; she walked through the Ogaden dessert, where she was captured by Somali soldiers and held in a concentration camp for ten years. That is the time and circumstances when she wrote this poem about writing. She eventually made it to USA, where she now works as an artist and teaches in Queensborough Community College, New York.
Before my finger loses its best friend
Before my finger loses its best friend,
before it casually forgets its pen
and begins tapping on the ground;
before the clean sheet disappears
on which it pours out its complaint,
conversing with the world;
before it gives away the means to write
its message, share the panorama
of its thoughts using a pen determined
to write soberly, and when it’s sober,
writes in blood-red ink, un-wash-away-able!
and if anybody tries to scrub its writing off
or over-paint, it flares up and if they try
to burn it down the dry sheet will turn wet;
before my finger casually forgets its pen…
without a drum-beat, it can carry
across borders, without an arrow
it will penetrate the eye,
demolish buildings, put up new ones,
it will never be confined, because the mind
cannot be chained like legs, its dreams
cannot be lowered to subhuman levels;
before its aspiration will evaporate,
at day-break when night fades to protect flesh
from lifting off the bone and changing into dust,
when mind is deep in worry about enemies,
before a pen loses sight of its best friend,
before it starts talking to the ground by tapping on it,
when the brain is restless, bleeds a little,
when imagination is all-powerful, bright red,
before anything is casually forgotten,
before the mind sells out in order to survive,
when it is docile to its inner consciousness,
writes down its message, ink on paper –
now the pen speaks, spreads its wings, flies
endless distances, demolishes the old, builds new…
and if the pen falls in love soberly,
like a bee sucking droplets from a flower,
if it sips love from the inkpot,
then it will write in praise of beauty,
how the world is blessed with wonders,
beautiful words will beautify its work,
enchant its readers with artistic voice,
put love into the house it builds,
removing the old view, replacing with its own,
so readers see love through the pen’s
eye, a pen’s precise perspective…
as hopefully is happening now,
before my finger casually forgets its friend
or the clean sheet of paper disappears
on which it pours out this complaint,
before my pen finds itself speaking to the floor!
[written during the poet’s 10 year detention in a Somali prison]
Misrak Terefe is a well-known young poet and performer based in Addis Ababa. She is a founding member of the Tobiya Poetic Jazz group that holds popular monthly events at the Ras Hotel. She writes fearlessly and brilliantly about emotional turmoil, depression, sexual violence. She has published one book of poems, called Chew Berenda (Salt Market).
Enkutatash
new year new year: enkutatash – my pearly blues,
of all the names why did the angel give you this?
oh how i wish your name would be just pearl – enku
would be enough – but why tatash? tatash
with all our troubles, tatash with all our blues.
we already have enough of that: don’t borrow us more trouble.
enkutatash – for you – to bloom we bake the bread.
we spread the grass as carpets, flat, we burn the incense,
add the plates, the blessed, to celebrate – to celebrate the change.
enkutatash, if you come – then change, then change us, too.
but if you come to bring new trouble – year after year – don’t come at all.
What did you find so beautiful?
(for a one-year old baby girl who was raped and killed)
My feet had not begun to walk,
my mouth to speak,
I was no earthly good at laughing,
even so…
my eyes could not see clearly what they saw,
my hands were still too soft to fight,
but even so…
I was still a crawler on the ground,
a creature making words which only I could catch,
so how could you have won
by beating me?
how was my loss your victory?
my girl your man?
was it my babyhood that made you brave?
please tell me, what was it in the end
which tempted you into my little bed?
what did you find so beautiful?
my hips, my chest, my long hair or my legs?
my scent of pee or sweat?
I could call you Killer, Rapist, you who married me
to earth…
but oh please, tell me on my life,
what did you find so beautiful?
May 2020 marked the publication of Songs We Learn from Trees, the first ever anthology of Ethiopian Amharic poetry in English (Carcanet Press, 2020).
This is a huge landmark for Ethiopian poetry which has been flourishing in its own proud highland bubble for centuries! I remember being shocked, then angry, when I bought a copy of The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry in 2002 and found not a single Ethiopian poet listed. Ethiopians will tell you wryly, “we suffer from never having been colonised”, and there is a grain of truth in this horrible witticism.
The poets:Mekdes Jemberu
Mihret Kebede
Liyou Libsekal
Seifu Metaferia
Zewdu Milikit
Tagel Seifu
Alemu Tebeje
Kebedech Tekleab
Misrak Terefe
Mekdes Jemberu is a popular Ethiopian poet and founder of the Ethiopian Women Writers Association. In the late 1990s, she helped to organise an anthology of women’s writing entitled Egna (We). Her poems contain many gaps, as her words struggle to emerge from silence, from the traditional woman’s place in society. They bear witness. They tell us how difficult it still is for a woman both personally but also culturally to express herself.
The home I left behind
My home has blackened
like a cloud
repeating everything I did . . .
piling dirt on dirt
until the grime infects my eyes
gaps in floorboards . . . corners stopped
with beautifully knitted rugs
but hiding thorns and caked with dust . . .
my old home . . . you I left behind
hated and abandoned . . . refused to look at . . .
you who I denied . . .
you go on calling . . . answers I held back
have formed an edge . . . grown teeth
that click as they approach me now . . .
piercing my raw skin with memories
an empty hill . . . the creaking hull of you
suspended there . . . calling my name
a shabby tent that mocks me . . . brings me back
unrests me sensing my exhaustion . . . the contrite
state that I have reached . . . you who rocks me
back and fourth . . . the hill and pit and you. . .
cracked earth . . .a valley gorge . . . a cave
to hide myself inside . . . the slope and steep
where we assembled and discussed . . .
laid bets . . . argued . . . you who pulls a dagger
made of steely sorrows . . . sticks it in my side
I am a woman born from my regrets
I am loud with them . . . I cannot shy away
there is no logic in the things I took for granted
trivial as childs’ play . . . a sudden noise . . .
my tolerance and patience pilfered . . .gone
now my broken home . . . you rebuild yourself
while the marriage I neglected mocks me . . .
I will always be in labour . . . feel my pain
increase as time goes by . . . a death row prisoner
weaker as the days tick by . . . homeless leftover
of withered charms. . . lethargic
my old home . . . you blacken
like a wave retreating . . . rising and receding . . .
you swagger all around me . . . wrestle me
and draw your flashbacks on my eyelids
throw your grit into my eyes . . .
you punch me . . . you floor me
Mihret Kebede is a young and fiercely energetic artist and poet, co-organizer of Addis Video Art Festival, a founding director of Netsa Art Village and Tobiya Poetic Jazz, the hugely popular monthly poetry and music event at the Ras Hotel in Addis Ababa. She is currently a PhD-in-practice program candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and she brings a collaborative, experimental, cross-cultural approach to her poetry too, which is fresh and exciting.
Tales about silence
This poem is an act which is the opposite but also the same as Mihret’s poem.
Stability and change are all mixed up in it.
This poem exists through what it says, it is the thing it asks when it asks: My dear, my city, why are you so silent?
This poem speaks about Menelik the king, about gold and ideas, butter, pride and milk.
This poem leaves the out-of-tune, the history of itself out, it does not allow silence in, it takes silence up.
This poem calls to all citizens, female and male, she or he.
This poem is itself a city, a tale, which pleads for words, for the lost, to build on truth: with roads, houses, chickens, freezers, hands and the soft moon, with evening light and teeth, tongues, fences and injera. This city broods, watches out, it asks the voices, why are you so quiet?
This poem is full of love.
It rests on sounds, gutturals, a warm vocal and many many I’s.
This poem is Addis Ababa, is Ankara, Athens and Jakarta, but also Vienna.
It is not ashamed, it carries the gold of what it says.
This poem acts like butter, cream, milk, with filtering and shaking, freely shaking up and out and round, shaking awake and after and before, it is full of full shakings – this poem asks about kings like big ideas. It makes a king out of voices. It makes powerful, makes power.
It acts out of the act of silence.
This poem is not quiet.
(This is the last stop so far on the poem’s journey from Amharic translated into English by Nebiy Mekonnen & Eric Ellingsen, then from English into German by Rike Scheffler, then back into English by Chris Beckett)
an intimate exile ስደተኛ ቅኔ
‘ a personal lament, a collective grief ’
space is shapeless
place is a fiction
and fiction is a fact,
sadly.
with a thought you triumph,
in a battle you don't take part
in a solely grief,
geography is just a graph.
ቦታ ቅርጽ የለውም
ስፍራም ልብ ወለድ ነው
በባከነ ሀሳብ….ባልዘመቱበት ድል
በብቻ ቁዘማ …..በብቻ ድልድል
ሀገር ካርታ ብቻ …. ካርታም ያው ምስቅልቅል
የሀሳብ መስመር ላይ ….ሀሳብን የሚጥል !
I am in exile!
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ
ግዞተኛ ቅኔ
space is shape less
a thought is space less.
in an affair I roar,
in a plot I matter,
in a play I function
I am in exile.
on the verge of the river,
a thirsty fish in water.
in a short distance
in a breath away,
a breathless dense air.
I am in exile!
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ
ግዞተኛ ቅኔ
በገዛ መንደሬ
የተሸለምኩ መጥኔ
ትንፋሽ እያጋራሁ …..ትንፋሽ ያጣሁ ቅኔ
እያለሁ የለሁም
አልታያችሁም ?
with a breath that binds us,
with a scarce hope to come
in a short distance,
in a nearby vicinity,
I am in exile!
can't you see me?
እያለሁ የለሁም
አልታያችሁም ?
I am in exile
in my own city
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ …. በገዛ ሀገሬ
በገዛ መንደሬ
ስደተኛ ቅኔ
a sibling to my dream
a stranger to a brother.
a distance between us
is a distance among us.
your lineage
is a misconnect,
my thought line
is inadequate.
before I am expelled,
I am a mis-placed
I am a mis-played
can't you see me?
አልታያችሁም ?
ለቤቴ እንግዳ
ለወንድሜ ባዳ
ከስደቴ በፊት….. የተሰደድኩ እኔ
ቦታዬ ላይ ሆኘ …..ቦታ ያጣ ጎኔ
ሀገሬ ላይ ሆኘ….ህብር አልባ ቅኔ
ግዞተኛ ቅኔ
I am in exile (climax) 2
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ
ስደተኛ ቅኔ
on the verge of the river,
a thirsty fish in a water.
in a short distance
in a breath away,
in my own city
in my own city
ባይተዋር ነኝ እኔ በገዛ ሀገሬ
በገዛ መንደሬ
ስደተኛ ቅኔ
ቦታ ቅርጽ የለውም
ስፍራም ልብ ወለድ ነው
በባከነ ሀሳብ….ባልዘመቱበት ድል
በብቻ ቁዘማ …..በብቻ ድልድል
ሀገር ካርታ ብቻ …. ካርታም ያው ምስቅልቅል
የሀሳብ መስመር ላይ ….ሀሳብን የሚጥል !
I am in exile
I am in exile
Can’t you see me?
በገዛ መንደሬ
የተሸለምኩ መጥኔ
ትንፋሽ እያጋራሁ …..ትንፋሽ ያጣሁ ቅኔ
እያለሁ የለሁም
አልታያችሁም ?
I am in exile!
Note: this poem is dedicated to all individuals and groups marginalized in the name of cultural and social hegemonic beliefs. It is a conversation between Amharic and English language with the same concepts slightly differently expressed in parallel. It can also be experienced in spoken and danced form on video
Liyou Libsekal spent her childhood traveling around East Africa with her family, then moved to the United States to attend George Washington University where she obtained a BA in Anthropology in 2012. Her poetry explores themes of home, identity and displacement and her pamphlet, Bearing Heavy Things, is included in the African Poetry Book Fund’s New Generation African Poets series. Her work has been included in Missing Slate Magazine, Badilisha Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review. In 2014 she won the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Liyou lives in Addis Ababa and writes her poems mostly in English.
Gospels I live in a bed of days and paper between the threads of a greying sweater strands of yarn raveling out. I’ve never been far from my gospels. Hours weave, and I collect words a graveyard of pens and discarded notes. I am slow moving and unholy. I sink in the discomfort wear it in like this old sweater frayed and ill fated. I am fragile in this disorder.
Hair
I left Africa carrying my skin
and my father’s thick ringlets
braids were for children,
tussled locks for grown women
eleven and unaware
a black child in a white playground
learns new words
girls flock to touch a tamed head
weaved by loving hands
and chemical cravings set in
It’s your crown says my mother
whose gorgeous mane gets wrapped tight
rolled ready for feverish waves
that convert to straight
what a word
Seifu Metaferia is a fearless older writer, poet and professor at Addis Ababa University, pioneer of research into oral literature including children’s poetry in Ethiopia. There is a thread of humour and compassion in his work, a focus on humble individuals, which humanise his steely-eyed explorations of truth and power. His much-loved collection of poems, Wistet, is titled with Seifu’s made-up word meaning “the deep inside”.
Longing
But for having nothing to peel
I would always be
peeling…
uncovering
life’s little cells
and knots
sorting its peripheral parts
from the core
even that it has substance and form
this too
such intimate knowledge
insights
into the swirl of the living, intricacies of diversity!
Measurement
How did you keep them
once you bought them,
these house slaves,
these beings under your feet,
these measurements
of your importance?
A world created by the powerful
They say “come here!.go there!”
with a gun
to emphasize their words
“just drive me, please!” they say
mixing polite and threatening
because they like to blur distinctions –
the powerful
yes, life itself is a cold draught
but once upon a time our earth was ours
one unit, whole
not cut up in a thousand pieces
not spoiled like she is now
before things got so messed up
she was just herself
and hugged us all no matter
if our skin was black or white
Zewdu Milikit lives and works in Gondar, the ancient capital of Ethiopia north of Lake Tana. He is a lecturer at Gondar College of Teachers’ Education and is passionate about the craft and traditions of Amharic poetry. His poems are playful, aphoristic, suggestive, firmly in the tradition of Wax and Gold.
Our journey
It was a long wide road
and we set off together,
just you and me,
walking up that long wide road
wider than a country,
long as modern history.
After many days and months
and a full bucket of years,
you said, “why don’t we stop?”
and the place you said this
looked a lot like
where we’d set off from.
My silly stomach
So I can feel how big he is,
he starves my fingers,
leans my toes
and fills my chest with feathers.
He even shrinks my skull
into a little gourd and boasts
he is by far the best
of stomachs in the world,
stands there pleased as punch
to be a silly paunch.
Tagel Seifu is a witty prolific novelist, poet and performer who published his first book of poems and short stories, Fiker (Love), at the age of 16. I love the titles of his collections, as well as the poems, for example Kefown Atinkut (Do not touch the beehive) and Yesedom Fitsame (The end of Sodom). Thre are many YouTube clips of him reading his poems to great acclaim.
Ab/sil/ence
Is the sign in the library crazy,
asking us to be silent here?
Doesn’t it know these shelves are dizzy
with books just waiting to scream?
Books which any visitor can open up
and let explosions out?
Our ears prick up, our hearts go thump
at what is coming up the throat.
Signs should not call for crazy things!
Silence is absent here.
Child of the sycamore
We who were cut from its trunk
toppled from its crown
gathered and chopped to little pieces…
we as dry as its dead branches
raked up with its leaves
thrown on the hot coals and burnt to ash…
kitchen stoves take us
in their fiery hands
before they blow us away…
but if anyone asks: who are you?
we still reply,
I am a child of the sycamore
[this poem is for Mushe Semu and his open, wide-ranging, revolutionary world outlook which I have known for 25 years]
Alemu Tebeje is an exiled Ethiopian journalist, poet, lyric writer and human rights campaigner who lives in London, close to Grenfell Tower. He runs the web site
www.debteraw.com and his poem 'Greetings to the people of Europe!' was projected on public buildings in Denmark, Italy, USA and UK by Jenny Holzer in 2017.
Greetings to the people of Europe!
Over land and sea, your fathers came to Africa
and unpacked bibles by the thousand,
filling our ancestors with words of love:
if someone slaps your right cheek,
let him slap your left cheek too!
if someone takes your coat,
let him have your trousers too!
now we, their children’s children,
inheriting the words your fathers left behind,
our bodies slapped and stripped
by our lifetime presidents,
are braving seas and leaky boats,
cold waves of fear – let salt winds punch
our faces and your coast-guards
pluck us from the water like oily birds!
but here we are at last to knock
at your front door,
hoping against hope that you remember
all the lovely words your fathers preached to ours.
O, Western Democracy!
I praise you,
who takes us to Gleneagles
in a warm coach,
so we can stage our protest
against the butcher of Ethiopia.
You drop us by an empty field
two miles from the hotel,
so even though the Butcher cannot hear,
we are free to hurl our slogans
into the wind:
“Political plurality!” we shout
“Human Rights!” we cry
The sun is low and it is rather cold.
Policemen stamp their boots.
Some crows hear what we say
and look surprised, they undertake
to carry messages into your conference
where every beak laps up
the sweetness of your words,
jabbing at your shortbread promises.
So in the dark I praise you,
for your glistening motorways
of free expression,
your empty fields and willing crows,
for the dry biscuits you feed to monsters.
Kebedech Tekleab is a poet, painter and sculptor who had to flee Ethiopia in 1979; she walked through the Ogaden dessert, where she was captured by Somali soldiers and held in a concentration camp for ten years. That is the time and circumstances when she wrote this poem about writing. She eventually made it to USA, where she now works as an artist and teaches in Queensborough Community College, New York.
Before my finger loses its best friend
Before my finger loses its best friend,
before it casually forgets its pen
and begins tapping on the ground;
before the clean sheet disappears
on which it pours out its complaint,
conversing with the world;
before it gives away the means to write
its message, share the panorama
of its thoughts using a pen determined
to write soberly, and when it’s sober,
writes in blood-red ink, un-wash-away-able!
and if anybody tries to scrub its writing off
or over-paint, it flares up and if they try
to burn it down the dry sheet will turn wet;
before my finger casually forgets its pen…
without a drum-beat, it can carry
across borders, without an arrow
it will penetrate the eye,
demolish buildings, put up new ones,
it will never be confined, because the mind
cannot be chained like legs, its dreams
cannot be lowered to subhuman levels;
before its aspiration will evaporate,
at day-break when night fades to protect flesh
from lifting off the bone and changing into dust,
when mind is deep in worry about enemies,
before a pen loses sight of its best friend,
before it starts talking to the ground by tapping on it,
when the brain is restless, bleeds a little,
when imagination is all-powerful, bright red,
before anything is casually forgotten,
before the mind sells out in order to survive,
when it is docile to its inner consciousness,
writes down its message, ink on paper –
now the pen speaks, spreads its wings, flies
endless distances, demolishes the old, builds new…
and if the pen falls in love soberly,
like a bee sucking droplets from a flower,
if it sips love from the inkpot,
then it will write in praise of beauty,
how the world is blessed with wonders,
beautiful words will beautify its work,
enchant its readers with artistic voice,
put love into the house it builds,
removing the old view, replacing with its own,
so readers see love through the pen’s
eye, a pen’s precise perspective…
as hopefully is happening now,
before my finger casually forgets its friend
or the clean sheet of paper disappears
on which it pours out this complaint,
before my pen finds itself speaking to the floor!
[written during the poet’s 10 year detention in a Somali prison]
Misrak Terefe is a well-known young poet and performer based in Addis Ababa. She is a founding member of the Tobiya Poetic Jazz group that holds popular monthly events at the Ras Hotel. She writes fearlessly and brilliantly about emotional turmoil, depression, sexual violence. She has published one book of poems, called Chew Berenda (Salt Market).
Enkutatash
new year new year: enkutatash – my pearly blues,
of all the names why did the angel give you this?
oh how i wish your name would be just pearl – enku
would be enough – but why tatash? tatash
with all our troubles, tatash with all our blues.
we already have enough of that: don’t borrow us more trouble.
enkutatash – for you – to bloom we bake the bread.
we spread the grass as carpets, flat, we burn the incense,
add the plates, the blessed, to celebrate – to celebrate the change.
enkutatash, if you come – then change, then change us, too.
but if you come to bring new trouble – year after year – don’t come at all.
What did you find so beautiful?
(for a one-year old baby girl who was raped and killed)
My feet had not begun to walk,
my mouth to speak,
I was no earthly good at laughing,
even so…
my eyes could not see clearly what they saw,
my hands were still too soft to fight,
but even so…
I was still a crawler on the ground,
a creature making words which only I could catch,
so how could you have won
by beating me?
how was my loss your victory?
my girl your man?
was it my babyhood that made you brave?
please tell me, what was it in the end
which tempted you into my little bed?
what did you find so beautiful?
my hips, my chest, my long hair or my legs?
my scent of pee or sweat?
I could call you Killer, Rapist, you who married me
to earth…
but oh please, tell me on my life,
what did you find so beautiful?
© Chris Beckett
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