Advent Calendar – 22

Hama Tuma, photo: gezett.de

Our latest poet on lyrikline.org has been active in the struggle for democracy and human rights in Africa since the 1960s. He studied Law in Addis Ababa and was expelled in his final year for demonstrating against the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie. He is a founding member of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party and has been banned from the country by three different Ethiopian governments for his commitment to human rights. He left Ethiopia in 1969 to pursue a life of political activism and lives in Paris today.

Advent Calendar door no. 22 reveals the Ethiopian poet

Hama Tuma

(with poems in Amharic and in English)

Born in 1949 in Addis Ababa, Hama Tuma is one of Ethiopia’s greatest satirists. He writes poetry in Amharic and English and published many political and satirical articles and stories.

Amharic is a new language on lyrikline.org. You can now listen to poetry in 58 different languages, read by the poets themselves.