Ethiopia Boy E-Book

Chris Beckett

• Herausgeber: Oxford Poets
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Chris Beckett grew up in 1960s Ethiopia, a country he describes as a 'barefoot empire, home of black-maned lions... old priests decked out like butterflies and blazing young singers of Ethio-jazz'. Ethiopia Boy plunges the reader into praise poems that sing and boast and glory in the colours and textures of this extraordinary country. Here is a world of feasting on spicy kikwot and of famine sucking the water from rivers, of lion buses and a prayer child, where Earth sings greetings to the feet that walk on her. Haunted by the memory of his friend Abebe, the cook's son, Beckett celebrates and laments a lost boyhood in poems of vivid immediacy.

Leseprobe

CHRIS BECKETT

Ethiopia Boy

As long as I, your slim son, am there for you, why should your home be destroyed?

Mekonnen Galaacha

Contents

Title PageEpigraphPrefaceAcknowledgementsAbebe, the cook’s sonMount EntotoBastard saffronPraise shout for Asfaw, the best cook in Africa!Wot?Motorcar!Lion busesGoat, Donkey and DogHorse songWondwossen, the prayer childWhat about the scabs on Tamrat’s knee?Lemon for loveSpotted hyenasBerhanu, the nightwatchmanAn afternoon in the dry seasonAbel, the breakfast boyDawit at the School of TomorrowAddis and AbebeIbsa’s dogEarth’s greeting to feetPoem to FridayDirge for Mrs EthiopiaTurkey of the RevolutionThe banquetTo the man with a guzzler wifeLizard waits for a new regimeSticksWhat have shepherds sung?Small nervous prayerA cow in the skyThe shoes he does not haveEucalyptus treesBoast of the fly-whiskCupboards and a guitarThe dugout copy of JerusalemGiftsZenabu’s taxiBefore a mealTwo brothersAbout the fish in Lake LanganoThe goodbye treeAbout the AuthorCopyright

Preface

I grew up in 1960s Addis Ababa, capital of Haile Selassie’s glamorous barefoot empire, home of black-maned lions and the African Union, of old priests decked out like butterflies and blazing young singers of Ethio-jazz such as Tilahoun Gessesse and Mahmoud Ahmed.

I wrote my first poem about Ethiopia when I was thirteen, about a python. Many more poems followed but never quite satisfied, as if there was something underneath which my normal language and style could not dig out. Only when I started reading as much Ethiopian poetry as I could find, and after I had a go at translating some Amharic poems myself with the help of a friend, did the real voice of my boyhood come stuttering back to the surface and start to write its own sort of poems.

Ethiopia has more than seventy ethnic groups and languages, so as many poetic traditions. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in any of them. I can only imitate the poems which I have read or heard, and liked, encouraging them to lead me in my own writing. A lot of this poetry is oral or sung. It is only recorded when an enthusiastic researcher like Fekade Azeze or Alula Pankhurst goes into the field to gather verses about a terrible famine, for example, or painful jigger fleas or corrupt politicians. It is an urgent poetry of protest and complaint, as well as praise, sometimes even in the voice of the object of protest, like the famine or the flea, so a sort of ironic boast. And since it is spoken, it delights in the sounds of words and in the physical presence of the people it addresses.

Chris Beckett

2013

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems (or versions of them) first appeared: Ambit, ModernPoetry in Translation, Poetry London, Seam, Smiths Knoll, The BestBritish Poetry 2011 (Salt), The Shuffle Anthology 2010/2011 and Wasafiri. ‘About the fish in Lake Langano’ was commended in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2008.

Many thanks also to Fekade Azeze for permission to use lines from his book Unheard Voices: Drought, Famine and God in Ethiopian Oral Poetry (Addis Ababa University Press, 1998) in my collage poem ‘To the man with a guzzler wife’. Also to Bewketu Seyoum and Alemu Tebeje for the chance to learn about Ethiopian poetry direct from two contemporary Ethiopian poets; and to Zerihun Tassew for telling me the story of ‘Goat, Donkey and Dog’, as well as for his help in finding the house where I lived as a boy in Addis Ababa and through it, what had happened to Abebe.

I am very grateful to Moniza Alvi and Pascale Petit for their advice and encouragement over the years; also to Michael Laskey, David and Helen Constantine, Daljit Nagra, Fred D’Aguiar, John Haynes, Jane Duran, Robert Seatter and the Thursday Group, Jo Roach, Meryl Pugh, Anne Ryland, Valerie Josephs; and Isao Miura for allowing me to use one of his beautiful paintings for the cover of this book.