Songs We Learn from Trees

'The range of styles and tones is impressive: from sorrowful love laments and witty socio-political satire to tense existentialist poems and sombre historical meditations...lovers of literature will delight in the aesthetic virtuosity of the poems...this anthology is a painstaking declaration of love for the poetic traditions of Ethiopia and its diaspora, and will likely make the reader fall in love with these traditions as well.'
Sara Marzagora, Wasafiri

'This wide-ranging anthology is a pleasure to read. It opens a long overdue window into the way Ethiopians approach the craft of poetry.'
Malika Booker

'This book is a vital contribution to African letters, rendering into English and in one volume, a rare and vibrant diversity of voices from a country oft ignored in continental letters. It holds all the lyricism, haunted echoes, and lament and praise song that you know can only come from a people whose search for the sublime was not limited to mountain churches, but to churches carved deep into the search, the complete scale of the human, from the body to the highest soul. I am grateful for this work and cannot recommend it enough. I hope the voices held here find expressions in their own collections soon'
Chris Abani, Judge, 2021 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry

'Chris Beckett and Alemu Tebeje's anthology of Ethiopian Amharic poetry is wonderful - not only for the choice of poems - but for the fluency and energy of the translations. The editors are also to be congratulated for their cogent introduction and context to Ethiopian poetry.'
Katrina Naomi, Modern Poetry in Translation