RECOMMENDING ETHIOPIA'S KNOWN POET LAUREATE
Feleke
**************************Forwarded Message*********************
From: "Wondimu.Mekonnen" <Wondimu....@BTInternet.com>
Reply-To: Ethio...@ethiolist.com
To: Ethio...@ethiolist.com (EthioForum Mailing List) Save Address
Subject: [EthioForum] - Fw:
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 23:58:32 -0000
Dear Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia,
My friends from Sweden are asking me to share the following with you to act at
once. Could you please read the following message from Dr Tadesse and Ato Hailu
Gebre Yohannes (Gemoraw) and act without delay. Send it either directly to
Tadesse Zerihun <tadesse...@ekon.slu.se>
tonight itself, or send it to me as quickly as possible. We are running of
time. Do not post-pone it. We should do something while the Laureate is alive.
Fast please. I need a couple of hundred names and addrsses as quickly as
possible. Call your ask your friends to give their names addresses to be
included?
"simalee malinqaaba
mukilee bala qaaba"
sings Oromo. It means,
"At least a tree has leaves.
I have no one else to turn to
but you"
Hurry up!
Wondimu
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To: Wondimu.Mekonnen <Wondimu....@btinternet.com>
Date: 03 December 1999 06:16
Subject: Recommending Ethiopia’s Known Poet Laureate
Selam Wondmu,
Thank you so much for your prompt reply and thanks also for your innovative
ideas of sharing the view on EEDN and EthioForum. Please go ahead with it.
According to Hailu G. Yohannes,we seem to run out of time as the deadline for
submitting the letter along lists of names of people is coming closer. So as
you suggested, it is a good idea dispatching the letter via EEDN and
EthioForum and share with more people. That will
surely help expand the list of names of participants. I was told that Dr. Fikre
Tolosa and Dr. Richard Pankhrest have also written directley to the Nobel
Committee early this year. The Nobel Committee suggested that it would be a
good idea if at least two internationaly known Literature or play writers also
recommend Poet
Laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin's name. In this regard it would also be nice if
we could find the address of
luminaries as Wole Soyinka of Nigeria and England's John Waddington-Feather.
Once the idea is dispatched, then people can even directly submit the letter
along with the name list directly to the Nobel Prize Committee by email from
wherever they are located around the globe. One can search the proper email
and postal address of the Nobel Prize Office on the website: <www.google.com>
very easily. Meanwhile, I will also try to dispatch the letter to some more
friends that I know in person. So, go ahead and do what you can and let us
keep on working on this matter. It is also important to remain in touch by
email.
Yours sincerely,
Tadesse Zerihun.
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From: Tadesse Zerihun <tadesse...@ekon.slu.se>
To: Wondimu....@btinternet.com <Wondimu....@btinternet.com>
Date: 02 December 1999 15:11
Subject: Recommending Ethiopia’s Known Poet Laureate
Dear Wondimu,
Poet Hailu Gebre Yohannes (Gemoraw) has zealiously been working for some months
now trying to see to it that Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin's name is
recommended for nomination to the Nobel Prize Committee on Literature. He
urged me to ask you to desiminate the news via email to his friends and fans in
order that name lists are immediately submitted to the Nobel Committee in the
next few weeks. I have also dispatched to those I know of and we may stand by
Gemoraw's side in assisting Tesegaye's issue come to the fore. In connection to
this, I hereby send you the sample of the letter and name list that we are
trying to submit. You may share the view with friends over there and let us see
what we can do on this matter.
With regards,
Tadesse Zerihun.
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The whole text starts herein below:
December 2, 1999
To: Nobel Prize Committee
Subject: Recommending Ethiopia’s Known Poet Laureate
From: Friends and Fans of Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin
Dear Nobel Prize Committee Members on Literature,
Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin is Ethiopia’s most celebrated playwright
and widely acclaimed poet. The 63 year-old man of letters has a distinguished
literary career spanning over four decades. He not only
authored several plays but also directed them personally and entertained
hundreds of thousands of audiences with their successful performance in Addis
Ababa and other provincial towns of Ethiopia.
In his own right Tsegaye is a pioneer in the Ethiopian dramatic scene since it
was he who popularized Shakespeare in the Ethiopian theatre through his
adaptation and staging of the great playwright’s works such as Hamlet. No
Ethiopian playwright has dominated the Ethiopian theatre scene so much as
Tsegaye has done through his personal coaching of so many actors and actresses,
through his contribution to the setting up of the Department of Theatre Arts at
Addis Ababa University, and through the extensive staging of his plays.
Although he built his career mainly around the theatre, Tsegaye’s college
education was in Law, in which he had an LL.B. from the Blackstone School of
Law, Chicago. His training in drama was limited to a brief spell at the Royal
court Theatre in London and another one at the Comedie FranHaise in Paris.
Tsegaye Gebre Medhin is not only an accomplished playwright but also a
distinguished poet. Several of his English poems have been published in widely
read anthologies that include the works of such African luminaries as Leopold
Sedar Senghor of Senegal and Wole Soyinka of Nigeria. Just to provide a glimpse
of his poems in what follows let us look at his dictum on River Nile composed
in August 1997.
NILE! O NILE!
I am the first Earth Mother of all fertility
I am the Source I am the Nile I am the African I am the beginning
O Arabia, how could you so conveniently have forgotten
While your breath still hungs upon the threads of my springs
O Egypt, you prodigal daughter born from my first love
I am your Queen of the endless fresh waters
Who rested my head upon the arms of Narmer Ka Menes
When we joined in one our Upper and Lower Lands to create you
O Sudan, born out of the bossom of my being
How could you so conveniently count down
In miserable billions of petty cubic yards
The eternal drops of my life giving Nile to you
Beginning long before the earth fell from the eye ball of heaven,
O Nile, that gush out from my breath of life
Upon the throats of the billions of the Earth's thirsty multitudes,
O World, how could you so conveniently have forgotten
That I, your first fountain, I your ever Ethiopia
I your first life still survive for you?
I rise like the sun from the deepest core of the globe
I am the conquoror of scortching pestilences
I am the Ethiopia that "stretch her hands in supplication to God"
I am the mother of the tallest traveler on the longest journey on Earth
My name is Africa I am the mother of the Nile.
O Nile, my prodigal daughter on the wilderness of the desert
Bringing God's harmony to all brothers and sisters
And calming down their noises of brass in their endless nakednesses
O Nile, you are music that restore the rhythm of existance
Into the awkward stampeding of these Middle Eastern blindnesses
You are the irrigator that cultivate peace
From my Ethiopian sacred mountains of the sun
Across to nod on the East of Aden and across Sinai
Beyond Gibraltar into the heights of Mount Moriah
O Nile, my chosen sacrifice for universal peace offering
Upon whose gift the heritages of Meroe and Egypt
Still survive for the benefit of our lone World.
You are the proud daughter O Nile, who taught
The ancient world how to walk in upright grace
You are my prodigal daughter who saved and breast fed
Little lost Jacob whose brothers sold for food
You, who nurtured, fed and raised
The chils prophet called Moses on your cradle,
You, who stretched out your helping hand and protected
The baby Christ from the slaughtering swords of their Herods,
O Nile, my infinite prodigal daughter
At whose feet mountains like Alexander bent
Their unbendable heads to drink from your life giving milk,
O Nile, at whose feet giants like Ceasser Knelt
Conquorors like Napolean bowed
Their unbowable heads to partake from your imortal bounty.
O Nile, you are the majestic blood line of my African glory
You are the Adey Abeba my Ethiopian new year flower
That shower my blessings upon the starved of the world
You are the eloquence that ring the Ethiopian bell across the deaf world
You are the gifted dancer of graceful rhythms
That harmonize with your sisters Etbara and shabale
With your brothers Awash and Juba
To fertilize the scorched sands of Arabia
O Nile, without your gift Mideterania shall be a rock of dead waters
And Sahara shall be a basket of skeletons
You are Africa's black soil that produce life
You are the milk that quench the thirsty multitudes
You are the messenger of my gospel, O Nile
That bring my abundant harvest to the mouth of the needy
You are the elegant pilgrim of my mercy.
You are the first fountain you are the first ever Ethiopia
You are the appeaser of the lustful greeds
You are the first Earth Mother of all fertility
Rising like the sun from the deepest core of the globe
You are the conquoror of the scortching pestilence
You are the source you the Africa you are the Ethiopia you are the Nile.
In recognition to similar other touchy poems produced earlier by Poet Laureate
Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, in its Congressional session held from 21st to 25th
July, 1997, at Buckinghamshire, High Wycombe, England, the United Poet
Laureates International and the 15th Congress of World Poets invited him to
participate.
At that meeting, the United states Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Russia's Igor
Mikhailusenko, France's Asit Chakravorty, Australia's Ruth Goldthorpe,
England's John Waddington-Feather, Canada's Luben Angeloff, Germany's Marides
Soler, Hong Kong's Li Qing, Malaysia's Too Chee Cheong and many other famous
poets from Japan, Korea, Taiwan were present and attended his poem "Esop" (an
epic on the life of the black Greek poet-philosopher of Ethiopian origin) and
his paper entitled "Poetry Conquered Darkness and the
World was Saved" which was presented at the Congress. United Poets Laureate
International and the Congress of World Poets are two sister organisations for
major world poets who stand for world peace and brotherhood, established since
twenty years, and occasionally meet in different parts of the globe.
Through his literary works Tsegaye spoke against human destitution and
degradation, bigotry and oppression, and upheld the values of unity, equality,
freedom, universal brotherhood, and the dignity of the African.
His distinguished literary contribution is given recognition both at home and
abroad through his award of the Emperor Haile Sellassie 1 International Prize
(1966), the Order of Senegal (1969), the International Human Rights Free
Expression Award (1995), and through his membership in the African Writers’
Union and the United Poets Laureate International. Today this Ethiopian
literary giant is fighting for his life because of kidney
complications. Anyhow, his works are not forgotten on shelves and private desks
but in the heart of those who are familiar with his works. We therefore
earnestly appeal to the Nobel Prize Committee, friends of Ethiopia and lovers
of literature, to sign and recommend Laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin for the
Nobel Award in Literature for the year 2000.
Name Address
1. Poet Hailu Gebre Yohannes Rudsjöv. 51, Nacka, Sweden
2. Dr. Tadesse Zerihun 623 Columbus Ave. Suite # 3, Boston, MA
02118, USA.
3. Dr. Tsegaye Tegenu Smålandsv. 34, 757 58 Uppsala, Sweden
4. Mr. Haile M. Denbu Rudsjöv. 51, Nacka, Sweden
5. Mr. Mulugeta Tibebu
6. Ms. Zenebu
7. Dr. Amare Tegbaru
8. Dr. Girma Gebre Senbet SLU, Box 7005, 750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
9. Dr. Getachew Tedla Belmansgatan 42, 751 50 Uppsala, Sweden
10. Mr. Zenebe Bekele
11. Wondimu Mekonnen 48 Farnborough Way, London SE17 2JF, England.