Liyou Libsekal

(Ethiopië, 1990)

Biografie

Liyou Libsekal spent her childhood traveling around East Africa with her family, then moved to the United States to attend George Washington University where she obtained a BA in Anthropology in 2012. Her poetry explores themes of home, identity and displacement and her pamphlet, Bearing Heavy Things, is included in the African Poetry Book Fund’s New Generation African Poets series. Her work has been included in Missing Slate Magazine, Badilisha Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review. In 2014 she won the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Liyou lives in Addis Ababa and writes her poems mostly in English.

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.