Ethiopian literature, the new frontier?

Author - Chris Beckett

As an English poet writing about my boyhood in Addis Ababa, I soon realized that
Shakespearean sonnets were not appropriate! I needed to find out about Ethiopian poetry and
literature, so that I could adapt some of their forms, wrap my English words in an Ethiopian gabi,
if you like. Only then could I get close to the feeling of being an English boy in Addis. So I
started Amharic evening classes at SOAS in London and, while waiting for my Amharic to
magically improve, I haunted the library looking for English translations of Ethiopian poetry and
novels.

What I found was that not much Ethiopian literature is available in English! There are a few
novels/short stories written in English, like Daniachew Worku's The Thirteenth Sun (1973) and
Hama Tuma's The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and other stories (1993); also Nega
Mezlekia's memoir, Notes from the Hyena's Belly (2000); and more recently Dinaw Mengistu's
prize-winning novel Children of the Revolution (2007) and Maaza Mengiste's Beneath the Lion's
Gaze (2010). These are all well worth reading: I especially like Hama Tuma's mordant satire,
which is enough to shatter your rose-tinted spectacles about life in Ethiopia, even as you roar
with laughter! But where are the translations of contemporary authors writing in Ethiopian
languages in Ethiopia?

As for poetry, my main interest, I started with the religious form called q'ene, otherwise known
as Wax & Gold (Semenna Worq), that I read about briefly in Philip Marsden's Chains of Heaven.
Q'ene depend on double-meanings in Ge'ez so are obviously difficult to translate, but their
brevity and playfulness is the template for a lot of folk poetry and Azmari songs. A few
wonderful translations of folk poems are to be found in Jack Mapanje's Oral Poetry from Africa
(1983) and in Wole Soyinka's 1975 anthology Poems of Black Africa, which includes a beautiful
Ethiopian Love Song:

You lime of the forest, honey among the rocks,

Lemon of the cloister, grape in the savannah ...

The Journal of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies is also rich in articles about, and examples of,
Ethiopian poetry, mostly from the early or mid 20th century: for example, George Savard's
translations of Afar warrior boasts, Werner Lange's translations of Kafa songs, and Enrico
Cerulli's version of a sensuous Oromo poem, Ox, which you may have heard on Poetry Please
on Radio 4 this August:

If I were an ox, an ox, a beautiful ox!

beautiful and stubborn,
a rich merchant would buy me,
buy me and slaughter me,
spread out my skin and take me to the market.
 An ugly woman would bid for me,
but a beautiful girl would buy me!
She would crush perfumes for me.
I would spend the night rolled up around her,
I would spend the afternoon rolled up around her.
Her husband would say, "It's just a dead skin."
But I would have my love!

More recently, Alula Pankhurst has written a fascinating article on Jigger Flea poems (often in
the voice of the hated flea) and Prof. Fekade Azeze of Addis Ababa University has published a
seminal book on oral famine poetry from the 1980s, Unheard Voices (AAU Press, 1998):

Here, take my clothes, roll them up and eat them!

I'm going where people have beans.

As for written poetry, the late poet-laureate Tsegaye Gabre Medhin wrote some impressive
poems in English, notably Nile, which you can find on the internet. Solomon Deressa made
exciting translations of the artist/poet Gebre Kristos Desta in the 1960s, and Deressa himself
writes frequently in English (as well as French) - for example his wide-ranging poem/essay The
Poem and its Matrix. All these poems show an interest in experimental styles, influenced by
western literary movements, but are still fully engaged with Ethiopian social and political issues.
Deressa's Matrix, for example, is a plea for literary pluralism but political cohesion in post-Derg
Ethiopia: here English perhaps plays the negotiator with other Ethiopian languages for whom
Amharic is a whip-carrier. The Poetry Translation Centre in London (with Martin Orwin) has
also translated a wonderful poem by Mengistu Lemma, Longing, which is on their website:

The train hauled me out of London -

out of the smoke, the smog, the grime,
the filthy mix of soot and dust -
while the train spun fog from the fabric of steam,
clothing the land with its garment
of blessings and punishment,
Yizze kataf, yizze kataf, goes the powerful weaver.
Isn't it amazing? Life's a miracle:
coal smoke set free through the power of coal!.......

When I was visiting Addis in 2007, I met the brilliant young poet and novelist Bewketu Seyoum.
Coming from a religious family in the countryside of Gojjam, his poetry has the concision of
q'ene with the social and emotional punch of oral poetry:

ኅሰሳ ሰላም In search of peace

ማጭድ ይሆነን ዘንድ ምኒሽር ቀለጠ Our hands bend iron for sickles,
but the heart starts to imagine
ዳሩ ብረት ንጂ ልብ አልተለወጠ
our enemies' necks as grasses.
ለሳር ያልነው ስለት እልፍ አንገት ቆረጠ፡፡
If q'ene delight in a hidden "gold" meaning, Bewketu's poems derive their power from a haiku-
like intensity which sets the reader's imagination working. He tackles love, poverty, freedom,
abuse of power, even global warming, but with a lightness of touch which is modest and
compelling.

ክልክል ነው! Prohibited!

Smoking is prohibited!
ማጨስ ክልክል ነው! Whistling is prohibited!
ማፏጨት ክልክል ነው! Peeing is prohibited!
መሽናት ክልክል ነው! The whole wall made up of prohibitions.
ግድግዳው በሙሉ ተሠርቶ በክልክል Which one is right??
የቱ ነው ትክክል? Were I blessed with a piece of wall, a little
piece of power,
ትንሽ ግድግዳ እና ትንሽ ኀይል ባይለኝ
my slogan would be:
“መከልከል ክልክል ነው!” የሚል ትእዛዝ አለኝ፡፡ Prohibitions are prohibited!
A bilingual pamphlet of Bewketu's
work, In Search of Fat, with translations
by myself and Alemu Tebeje Ayele was
published by Flipped Eye to coincide
with the Poetry Parnassus Festival at the
Southbank Centre in June/July this year.
Hosted by Simon Armitage as part of
the 'cultural Olympiad', 180 poets from
around the world attended and Bewketu
represented Ethiopia, performing to
great acclaim on the roof garden of the
Queen Elizabeth Hall, in the Poetry
Library and the Festival Hall, as well as
for the Wordsworth Trust in Kendall
and at a concert with Baaba Maal in
London! One of his poems was read on
BBC Radio Scotland and he ended his
trip with a reading of his humorous short
stories in Lithos Road, organised by the
Ethiopian Artists Association in Britain:
he was not the only star, there were
stunning readings in English and
Amharic by many London-based
Ethiopian poets and writers.

As my Amharic improves, I hope to Ethiopian poet and novelist Bewketu Seyoum reading from his work, In Search of
tackle other contemporary poets such as Fat, during the Poetry Parnassus festival held at London's South Bank Centre as
part of the cultural Olympiad.
Zewdu Milikit, Fekade Azeze, and Photo © Chris Beckett
Getnet Eneyew. There are magazines
here and in USA which are interested in publishing good translations of Ethiopian poetry and
fiction, such as Modern Poetry in Translation and Wasafiri (in which Fekade Azeze's poem
Addis Ababa is due to appear next spring). The Poetry Translation Centre at SOAS is also open
to working on Ethiopian poems, if anyone can supply literal translations (not only from Amharic
of course).

Even with my limited knowledge, it seems clear that contemporary Ethiopian literature and
poetry are full of a unique energy and vision. They really deserve to be better known outside
Ethiopia!