#evolutionary poems

#evolutionarypoems is a translation of Mihret Kebede’s Amharic poem sequence by Anna Moschovakis and the author. #evolutionarypoems is part of a collaboration between Kebede and Moschovakis that began when they met in Addis Ababa in 2009. #evolutionarypoems is an unfinished and evolving conversation made up of many unkept promises. #evolutionarypoems contains translations but is not a translation. #evolutionarypoems is a bilingual book that extends beyond the book. #evolutionarypoems is a record of Ethiopia’s recent and current socio-political conditions in a critical voice of a poet and her friend. #evolutionarypoems is incomplete. #evolutionarypoems is research. #evolutionarypoems is a search. #evolutionarypoems is a commitment to a willingness to fail. #evolutionarypoems is an invitation to a standing date. #evolutionarypoems is a speaking in silence. #evolutionarypoems is resistance in silence.

About the book Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, finalist for the Booker Prize, writes, "There is no silence that is ever empty of meaning. These powerful and moving poems by Mihret Kebede remind us that words--insistent and compassionate, furious and dignified, sorrowful and heartbroken--reside in that loaded quietness. In #evolutionarypoems, Mihret allows language to bear witness to moments that might otherwise break the heart. Here is a tribute to those lives cut short by imprisonment, exile, or death. Here is a path towards making memory bearable. Here, too, is a way towards hope."

And Uljana Wolf writes, “At once archive of the present and activation of silenced histories, Mihret Kebede’s #evolutionarypoems powerfully ignites an imaginary of resistance in order to change the rules of the game: “let me become flame / I am the people … not fuel, nor tool.” In this first English edition, Anna Moschovakis’s superbly energizing translation from the Amharic—document of sustained friendship and dialogue—is an expansion of that collective imaginary.”