Edited and translated by Chris Beckett and Alemu Tebeje, this is the very first anthology of Ethiopian poetry in English, packed with all the energy, wit and heartache of a beautiful country and language. From folk and religious poems, warrior boasts, praises of women and kings and modern plumbing; through a flowering of literary poets in the twentieth century; right up to thirty of the most exciting contemporary Amharic poets working both inside and outside the country.
Chris was born in London but grew up mostly in Ethiopia, where his father worked at the British Embassy in Addis Ababa. His book, Ethiopia Boy, was published by Carcanet/Oxford Poets in 2013. Chris Beckett is a poet whose childhood in 1960s Ethiopia has been the inspiration for a remarkable body of work collected in this book Ethiopia Boy. In it, you find praise poems, imitations of laments, boasts, a dirge, and visual and linguistic representations of varieties of sticks. Chris translates Ethiopian poetry and recently started Tamrat Books with Alemu Tebeje, to publish Ethiopian poets in English and Amharic.
His new book book can be purchased online at www.carcanet.co.uk. Exclusive 25% off RRP is available by using the following discount code: ETHIOPIA25.
“A wonderful trip to Addis last September, right in the middle of the keremt big rains, to track down our anthology poets, including relatives of the dead ones, and secure their permission to publish. My best friend in Addis, Zerihun, lent me one of his enthusiastic brothers, Anania, and we set off to visit an ex-president of the Ethiopian Writers Association, Tibebu Bellete, who now runs Ahadu Radio and seems to know and have been to school with every writer in Ethiopia! If a poet is dead, he knows their widow or their brother, if a poet is alive he knows their mobile number or the number of their best friend. I already knew quite a few of the poets in our anthology, but when I walked out of Tibebu’s office, I felt connected to Ethiopian poetry in a completely new way: electronically, telephonically, resting on my thigh!”
To read the full blog on Chris Beckets journey read it in full here:
https://carcanetblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/songs-we-learn-from-trees-chris-beckett.html Content also sourced from https://www.chrisbeckettpoems.com/