Contemporary Ethiopian poets: Fekade Azeze
“Yes, I have walked your streets, I have made no strides./ Your secrets are endless, Addis!” Poetry by Fekade Azeze, translated from Amharic by the author and Chris Beckett.
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Contemporary Ethiopian poets: Zewdu Milikit
“in the year of the spider —/ everyone’s weaving a ladder/ of cobwebs, and trying/ to fly when they’re falling…”
Poetry by Zewdu Milikit, in Amharic and English.
Contemporary Ethiopian poets: Bewketu Seyoum
“For him/ she is not just a woman:/ she holds the stars in her body, / the earth in her soul….”
Poetry by Bewketu Seyoum, in Amharic and English.
A selection of Q’ene
“We do not respect an angel for his wings/ or because he covers his face with his wings…” A selection of q’ene from Ethiopia, translated by Chris Beckett and Donald Levine.
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Ethiopian praise poems
“You lime of the forest, honey among the rocks,/ lemon of the cloister, grape in the savannah./ A hip to be enclosed by one hand;/ a thigh round like a piston…” A selection of six Ethiopian praise poems.
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Ethiopian famine poems
“Destitution is building a house./ Destitution is walling me in…” A selection of oral poems about famine, gathered by Fekade Azeze with the help of local schoolchildren in the highlands of Showa.
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Afar war chants
“a man gave twelve cows for a beautiful woman and seventeen days after the wedding/ I came to the bridegroom, armed with my spear…” Two ancient Afar war chants, as recorded by Georges C Savard.
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Tacit the Bedspread
“And when he was all done she brought the mirror for him to look in. And he sat a long while gazing at his new appearance, trying to recognize himself.” Story of the Week (March 14), by Cecil Bødker. Translated from Danish by Michael Goldman.
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Aquamarine
“She had a thousand questions she would like to ask: what he did, if he had children, where he had studied, where he lived. She wanted to be able to place him in the world, to know who he was.” Story of the Week (February 26), by Teolinda Gersão. Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.
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from ‘Nacciyar Tirumoli’—Take Me to His Sacred Places
“Uncover me. Why should I wear modesty when the world knows of my barefaced love?…” Translated from Andal’s ‘Nacciyar Tirumoli’ by Priya Sarukkai Chabria.
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