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Poet

Seifu Metaferia

Seifu Metaferia

Seifu Metaferia

(Ethiopia, 0)
Biography
Seifu Metaferia is a fearless older writer, poet and professor at Addis Ababa University, pioneer of research into oral literature including children’s poetry in Ethiopia. There is a thread of humour and compassion in his work, a focus on humble individuals, which humanise his steely-eyed explorations of truth and power. His much-loved collection of poems, Wistet, is titled with Seifu’s made-up word meaning “the deep inside”.
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.
© Chris Beckett and Alemu Tebeje, Songs We Learn From Trees (Carcanet Press, 2020)
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