​Thank you for visiting my website. I was born in London but grew up mostly in Ethiopia, where my father worked at the British Embassy in Addis Ababa. I won the Poetry London competition in 2001, and Sketches from the Poem Road, a collaboration with my partner, the Japanese artist and sculptor Isao Miura, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2015. Carcanet has published two collections about my boyhood in Ethiopia, Ethiopia Boy (2013) and Tenderfoot (2020).  ​Carcanet also published the first ever anthology of Ethiopian Amharic poetry in English, Songs We Learn from Trees, which I translated/edited together with my friend Alemu Tebeje. Songs was a finalist in the 2021 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry, judged by Chris Abani. Having helped Gale Burns host The Shuffle in Covent Garden for 10 years, I have started a new series with Isao at the Wheatsheaf pub off Oxford Street ('where Dylan met Caitlin'), because we both love hearing poets read their poems live! I am also very proud to have been chair of the Anglo Ethiopian Society and a trustee of the Poetry Society.​
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                                                                                                                       lemon for love! lemon for love!  
                                                                                                                                  lemon you are so sweet! 
                                                                                                                                                                                  (from Ethiopia Boy)

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