ያፈረስኩት ጎጆ

When I was in Addis Ababa last year I met up with Wondwosen Adane, lecturer on Ethiopian literature at Addis Ababa University, and asked him which poets he thinks are interesting and important in the current Amharic poetry scene. He suggested a list which included Mekdes Jemberu, so I arranged to meet her and talk about her poetry. She is a quiet person, but very passionate about words and women’s literature. She founded the Ethiopian Women Writers Association and in 1998 published an anthology of female poets entitled Egya, meaning “We.” She presented me with one of her books, and I asked her to choose a few poems that she particularly likes and would like to see translated. The first she marked was “Yafereskut Gojo,” so this is the first of her poems I have tackled. The process has been difficult, however, because I soon realised that Mekdes has a very rich vocabulary which includes Ge’ez (the predecessor of Amharic, now mostly used only in churches), also a style which is impressionistic, dreamlike, intensely personal but allegorical too, and her imagery is full of real dust and dirt. My Amharic dictionary was simply not up to Mekdes’ level! So I asked my friend Fasika Ayalew, herself a wonderful Ethiopian poet, for help and she came up with a translation which we have worked back and forth together until we are reasonably happy with the result.

—Chris Beckett