Tsehai Publishers

Soaring on Winged Verse description

This book is the official memoir of the late Poet Laureate Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin. It is a project that began in the twilight years of Tsegaye’s life in New York, as a collaborative effort between the author and the poet.

It is a text that is culled from long interview sessions conducted with this memoir in mind, detailing chronological events along with vivid recollections that left indelible marks on Tsegaye and his creative imagination. Part of this book was completed after Tsegaye’s death in February 2006. Family members, the author, and the editor have conducted extensive research in the US and in Ethiopia to verify stories and substantiate facts. Our efforts notwithstanding, this work is significant less as a factual grid of Tsegaye’s life than an intimate window into the writer’s world, and a glimpse of the possible origins of his creative musings. By our estimation and to the extent possible, this publication represents the most complete memoir of Tsegaye’s eventful life.

Tsegaye’s prolific literary production spans several decades. From 1951 to 1996 he wrote close to 45 plays (including translations and adaptations) as well as a volume of poetry Isat Woy Abeba (Blaze or Bloom) hailed among the most influential works in Amharic. He wrote in Amharic and in English. Original in thought and provocative in content, Tsegaye’s works probe into the tumultuous meeting spaces of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ values while critically examining assumptions of identity across generations. His literary stance illuminated social and political ills, bearing all in superbly crafted language that remains etched in the minds of theatre-goers and readers alike.

Tsegaye’s translations of plays by Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht were not merely direct renderings but re-contextualized presentations that in many ways defied the existence of boundaries between the local and the universal. Keenly aware of his African identity, Tsegaye met and shared his ideas with the likes of Leopold Senghor and Julius Nyrere. He infused pan-African values in his creative works which were staged at continental cultural festivals, and in his published essays on the African origins of humankind.

This memoir follows Tsegaye’s remarkable journey from his humble beginnings as a shepherd in Boda to his rise as a luminary literary figure.