Poet

Kebedech Tekleab

(Ethiopia, 1958)

Biography

Kebedech Tekleab is a poet, painter and sculptor who had to flee Ethiopia in 1979; she walked through the Ogaden dessert, where she was captured by Somali soldiers and held in a concentration camp for ten years. That is the time and circumstances when she wrote this poem about writing. She eventually made it to USA, where she now works as an artist and teaches in Queensborough Community College, New York.

Songs We Learn From the Trees is the first anthology of Amharic poetry to be translated to 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.

The poet's web site, including her art work, is HERE