Poet

Mekdes Jemberu

(Ethiopia, 0)

Biography

Mekdes Jemberu is a popular Ethiopian poet and founder of the Ethiopian Women Writers Association. In the late 1990s, she helped to organise an anthology of women’s writing entitled Egna (We). Her poems contain many gaps, as her words struggle to emerge from silence, from the traditional woman’s place in society. They bear witness. They tell us how difficult it still is for a woman both personally but also culturally to express herself.

Songs We Learn From the Trees is the first anthology of Amharic poetry to be translated in English. A first taste of a rich literature for English readers. Anthologies naturally group writers together, but in order to enable each of the excerpted poets to stand out on their own, Poetry International Archives is presenting them individually, with brief biographies provided by the book's editors.

Bibliography

Poetry
Muga, 2008
Enbassel, 2016