Book Title: S Y M P O S I A
Author: Asafa Tefera
Dibaba (PhD)
Category:
Poetry
Word Count: 32, 233. Page: 292
Overview:
SYMPOSIA is an Anthology of poems in English. It depicts
the ugly faces of exile, the form and the force of assimilative hosting culture,
living with the living memory of homeland as an imagined community, and more.
To do so, acutely attentive to the vying pressures of personal and historical
experiences, SYMPOSIA dips into the reservoir of African (Oromo) values, thoughts, and
worldviews to cast light on the shades of nervous human condition, to find
meanings in the turn and twist
of life, and to tap into the human relentless search for truth, justice, and
freedom.
Significance:
Why
SYMPOSIA? It takes more than analysis to empower the reader and to help
overcome the perils of living in exile or in estrangement in one’s home. Here
is a book that empowers the reader to passionately and critically relate to
their personal stories and embrace their vulnerability.
Audience:
Primary:
The
millions of Africans in the Diaspora who do not ever want to spiritually drift
and be disconnected from their homeland. The book is for those who feel deeply
concerned when marginalized by the hosting culture, miss their home dearly, and for those who live on exile on their homeland estranged and humiliated, and who try to cling to their imagination not to begin to experientially lose their hope.
Secondary:
The
book is written also for those interested in Oromo culture—the poetic surge of
its creative originality, as it is for those who waffle in Waffle House or
chase ladybugs in the prison-house elsewhere.
Purpose
In
exile, everyone can face crisis of life, career, family, and culture-shock. As
there can be opportunities, there are also prices to pay, and at times, costly
and too much to regret about—life in exile is bitter-sweet. Those pivotal times
are part of everyone’s journey in the wonderland. Some people are resilient and
can emerge from the crisis with their dreams intact while others give up (and
turn to alcohol, drug, and crime). Life on exile in one's homeland is another alianation and humiliation; it is a disempowering experience that leaves an open scar.
The
poetic voices in SYMPOSIA are the strong breed emerging (or struggling to emerge)
from the crisis with their hope and dream still alive and vibrant while
purposefully maintaining their goals (kaawoo)
and personality (sansaka) intact.
Edward
W. Said’s Reflections On Exile, with
a blend of its aesthetic and political concern, has noted in its collection of
literary and cultural essays this fact of exile, namely, the vying pressure of
personal and historical experience one can encounter in exile. Chinua Achebe’s Home & Exile is equally hard to
differ to as Achebe keenly discusses the notion and ideas of social justice in his
work and the painfully offensive facts of being in exile in one’s homeland. No
African writer to my knowledge offers a brilliant and detailed analysis of
African values and ways as Achebe does providing a parallel reflection on the
subject of exile compared with the European literature that often undermines
African sense of worth.
The
common thread of theme that runs through SYMPOSIA is that deep and dreadful
fear of living in exile (Diaspora or Home) and the painful longing for home moderated at times but
exacerbated by the hosting culture.
Brief Author Bio:
Asafa (Assefa) Tefera Dibaba of
Gombo Koora, Jarso, is the author of anthologies of poems in English and in
Oromo Language including Anaany’aa,
Edas-Edanas, Finfi (Ilyaada), Decorous Decorum, and The Hug, and prose: Danaa,
Eela, Theorizing the Present (reprinted as Beyond Adversities), and more. He is a poet,
educator, and researcher relocated to the USA in July 2010 as a 2009/2010
IIE/SRF Scholars Fellow from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, after repeated
persecutions and imprisonments for his dissident writings and for speaking to
the repressive power.
He is a PhD graduate (2011-2015) from
Indiana University, USA. While reading and writing on “Resistance Poetics” and
“Social Resentment,” his research also focuses on “Ethnoecology”/ “Ecopoetics,”
an interdisciplinary approach to the role of alter/native indigenous knowledge
and practices to balance human-ecology solidarity in rural Africa.
In this profound collection, SYMPOSIA, while
grappling in exile with grief at the death of his father and mother back home,
the poet channels the rhythms of life in exile, traverses the sorrows of
unbearable human condition, and practices, among other things, Ecopoetry to express his strong human
& ecological concern.
Book Delivery Date: Anytime soon (Completed
Manuscript)
Introduction &
Sample Chapters:
Introduction
to First Edition
_________________________________________
Prologue
(A Short
Note on “Symposia: Poet to Poet”)
Three issues are at stake in poetry writing at present: first, whether or not we can write an emotionally charged (subjective) material/topic such as freedom, love (loving, not loving, not being loved), and justice effectively with artistic objectivity. This is more complicated by the notion of choices (and voices,), self-sufficiency, free-love, and individual sanctity over collectivism
Voices say this: Humankind have choices, choices have consequences, consequences have risk or reward! It is those Voices (heeded or ignored) and Choices (risk or reward) that make lines or volumes and make us who we are as Poets—living and dying with our Choices!
Second, poets are of a tender-heart, vulnerable, and victims to violent shifts of response and emotions that human conditions bring to us. We are sensitive; however, so being, we are beneficiary of human benign neglect and gross oblivion around. We do a great deal out of something ignored as trivia!
Third, whether we poets are misfit in a misshapen society or misshapen at a misfit time, really I am not quite sure myself! But one thing I am certain of is this: the poet struggles with SOMETHING bigger than himself/herself: to be able to see the relations of the unrelated, to curve out a creative originality, and to muse about if pleasurable pain (painful joy) is bearable and if living and loving truly is ever possible of to date! For no wrong life can be lived rightly!
Less than that, what good is Poetry for?
Overture
Dear Poets,
In this Symposium, “Poet to Poet,”
we reflect on the following major themes
as an ongoing dialog in ecopoetics to date:
-human sociality of the poet:
-self and
other, individual and society
-the ongoing tragic dialectic between
a traumatized subject and unattainable “other”
-a poetic search for social medicine—a panacea
for the contemporary deficient subjectivity
-indispensable human/nature interconnectedness
-impossible love:
-choice and fate, will and determinism in human relationships
-male dominance and intensity, female
resistance and withdrawal
-gender
and genre, sex and social norm (safuu)
-artistic honesty
-poet the author, poet the persona, and the
character poet as appeared in the poem/song
-the meditative tone that resonates in the poem
or song,
-qualities of a good poem: deep joy,
enchantment, and the aspiration to know self and “other”
-“transition,”
“mind set,” and the individual struggle to communicate self
-language vacuum,
In the next session, we share our thought
process using one case example:
“Autumnal
Peregrination”
Here we will concentrate on what is happening
in “Autumnal
Peregrination,”
a poem by Dr. B.,
and I open it with three provisos:
First, I should make it clear at the outset
that,
for personal reasons, I must reserve more
details
to the poet herself,
as to the reader to find out what remains
unsaid in what has been said—
both inside the poem (and outside it) and
in the dialogue.
Second, the poem, “Autumnal Peregrination” should be read as an initial exploration
of
an unpublished poem which will ultimately
see the light of the day,
let us hope, with other collections by the
poet.
Third, because “Autumnal Peregrination”
is a journey poetry, it is irrefutably
necessary
to work on its connection with “nature”.
Hence, for contextual reasons, I
introduce ecopoetics,
as a working theory
of oral/literate culture interface, here
to study in the present poem
the poet’s engagement with the social aspect
of the indispensable relationship between human
and nature, which I call ethnoecology.
Undertaking a critical consideration of work
by a close friend can be a daunting task.
The reason is, the knowledge of
direct experiences & unfathomable memories
after separation
is impossible to catalog.
The common grounds and differences
are also hard to tell without an intuitive
sense of effective comparisons between the primal and the trivial.
Next, I
hasten to open the poem for reading and discussion: let us hear the rebellious
cry, the blankness and despair in the young poet’s voice, and the inestimable
value this intimately personal but
paradoxically comprehensive voice can impress on our thoughts about
matter-of-fact concerns: love, relationship, solitude, truth, uncertainty/indeterminacy,
and intensity.
Our Speakers will be: Poet L., Poet D., Poet S., Poet R., Poet T., Poet N, and myself.
Now, I invite Dr. B. to the stage to read her
poem. Please welcome Dr. B.
(As stated above, the
“Symposia” follows—discussions among imagined poets, hence, “poet-to-poet”—on a sample poem titled “Autumnal
Peregrination”.)
Annotated Table of
Contents:
C O N T E N T S
SYMPOSIA (Poet to Poet) 12
Introduction to First Edition 12
Prologue
12
Overture 14
“Autumnal Peregrination” 17
ON OUR ANCESTORS’ BONE 60
(Songs of Resistance)
Songs of Resistance I 62
Children
Of the Blue Moon 62
Let Us Lay Down Our Burden 64
Songs of Resistance II 66
Songs of Resistance III 86
Bullets Into Bells 86
It Is
Time To Converse & Act 88
What If
We Don’t Find… 89
Bare-bone
Truth 91
NATURE POEMS 96
Nectar
Quest 98
(Honey Bee & the
Wildflower)
Uume: Another Humanity 112
AMERICA’S HYPOCRISY 120
Anatomy
of Oppression I 122
Anatomy
of Oppression II 125
(Fear & Social Control)
Eidos of
History 131
Jackass
Conversation 134
“Limp Dick” 138
All Rise 142
Testimonial 145
Esoteric 148
Indiana 150
Decay
& Decline 151
(When In-Laws Turn Out-Laws)
America’s Hypocrisy 161
(The School of Resentment)
SONGS OF
LOVE & LIGHT 167
Confession 169
Entrapment
172
(Of the Rebel/Poet Self and
the Tame Elite Self)
When Muse Whispers 175
Thus
Prays A Desperate Lover 179
Songs of
Lonerism I 180
Songs of
Lonerism II 185
Songs of
Lonerism III 187
Could be Worse! 202
“Dr. Janitor” 203
“Hurly-Burly” Poem 206
(In
Memory of the US Election, Nov. 2016)
What Went Bad, the Fishing or … 208
Poetic
Madness 210
Aftermath 211
Landlord & Tenant 214
Bridging
the Gap 217
Intensity
219
When
Will We Walk This Road? 220
Hell Is
Inside Your Head! 226
Remote
Hope 228
Being at
Home & Not at Home 230
Remembering to Forget 231
My Heart
Is Like a Lonely Hunter 233
Some
Magic Persists 235
Hooray!
Beautiful Losers 237
Autumnal
Madness 238
In Need
of a Social Medicine 241
Either-Or 243
Of
An Unbearable Lightness of Being 244
Ode To My Father I 245
(Mijuu
Abbaa)
Ode to My Mother II 256
(Mijuu Ayya)
No
Distance is Too Far 259
In Love
& Light 261
Solitude 262
Exile
Note 265
Thus
Speaks Molu Kulu 267
Defiance 268
(My Comrade Is My Chi!)
(My Comrade Is My Chi!)
Song of
Self 270
Your
Language Is Your Country 271
God is a Lonely Man Without the Poor 274
Ode to a
Broken Plate 275
Beyond
“-ISM” 278
SONGS OF VULNERABILITY 282
Songs of
Vulnerability I 284
Song of
Vulnerability II 291
(Poet’s Recap)
(Poet’s Recap)
Curriculum Vitae /
Resume:
Assefa Tefera Dibaba, Ph.D.
(CV)
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Folklore (& Anthropology)
(June 2015), Indiana University, Bloomington
Dissertation: Ethnography
of Resistance Poetics: Power & Authority in Salale Oromo Folklore and
Resistance Culture (Ethiopia, Northeast Africa). Advisor: Dr. John McDowell
scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/20243
M.A., Comparative Literature
(July 2003), Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia B.A., English Language Teaching
(July 1997), Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia Diplomas in Continuing Education:
Environmental Education:
Transdisciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems
Cornell University (online),
February–April 2016
Reclaiming Broken Places:
Introduction to Civic Ecology
Cornell University (online),
September–November 2016
Environmental Education
Outcomes
Cornell University (online),
November 7 – December 18, 2017
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Ethnoecology / Ecopoetics
(Environmental Folklore & traditional ecological knowledge, TEK) Oral
Traditions, Personal Experience Narratives (and Life Histories)
Folk Beliefs, Rituals
Resistance
Culture
Women’s Folklore Children’s
Folklore Comparative Literature Nature / Earth Poetry
AWARDS
Indiana University, Doctoral
Scholars Program Award (2014-15)
American Folklore
Society, Gerald L. Davis Fund Travel Grants (2014, 2010)
American Comparative Literature Association, Travel
Grant (2013)
Folklore Institute, Indiana
University, Harry M. and Alma Egan Hyatt Fellowship (2012-13) Folklore
Institute, Indiana University, Harry M. and Alma Egan Hyatt Award (2011-12)
Folklore Institute, Indiana University, Folklore Fellowship Award (2011-12)
Institute of International Education, Scholars
Fellowship Award (2009-10)
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Finfi (Ilyaada) (Anthology of
Poems in Oromo Language). Finfinne/Addis Ababa: Subi Publishers. (2014).
The Hug (Poems). X-Libris Publishers, (2011).
Beyond Adversities. Munich: VDM Verlag Publishers,
(2010).
Themes & Patterns
of Traditional Oromo Marriage Counseling. (ed.). Finfinne/Addis Ababa:
East African Publishers. (2010).
Decorous Decorum (Poems). Finfinne/Addis
Ababa: Artistic Printing Enterprise. ( 2006).
Anaan’yaa.
(Poems
in Oromo Language). Finfinne/Addis Ababa: Artistic Printing Enterprise. (
1998/2006). Theorizing the Present: Toward a Sociology of Oromo Literature. Finfinne/Addis
Ababa: Bole Printing E. (2004).
Danaa. (Short Stories in Oromo
Language). Finfinne/Addis Ababa: Artistic Printing Enterprise. (2000).
Eela: Seenaa Oguma Oromoo (History of Oromo
Literature). Finfinne/Addis Ababa: Artistic Printing Enterprise, (2009). Edas-Edanas.
(Poems in Oromo Language). Finfinne/Addis Ababa: Artistic Printing
Enterprise. (1997).
Articles
“‘God Speak to Us’: Performing
Power and Authority in Salale, Ethiopia,” Journal of African Cultural
Studies, 26/3 (June, 2014): 287-302. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2014.901165 “‘Great Man’ or ‘Great
Myth’? Meles Zenawi: Historic or Mythic Ideologue?” Journal of Oromo Studies,
20/1&2 (July 2013): 91-131.
“Salale Oromo Women’s
Songs of Resistance (Oromia, Ethiopia),” International Journal of
Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, 7/3 (2014):47-66.
“OROMO SOCIAL
RESENTMENT: Re-envisioning Resentment Theory (An African Perspective), Oromia,
Ethiopia,” Africology: Journal of Pan African Studies, 11:7, May 2018.
Presentations
“OROMO SOCIAL RESENTMENT:
Re-envisioning Resentment Theory (An African Perspective), Oromia, Ethiopia,”
presented at the ALA Annual Conference 2017, “Africa & the World:
Literature, Politics, and Global Geographies,” Yale University, June 14-17, in Africology:
Journal of Pan African Studies, 11:7,
May 2018.
“ECOPOETICS OF PLACE:
Reclaiming Finfinne, Past & Present (Ethiopia), Presented at DERT
Conference organized by the Department of Folklore & Ethnomusicology at
Indiana University, IUB,, March 3-5, 2017. Paper submitted for publication,
September, 2017,
“Ethnographic Mystic: The
Politics of Ethnographic Search.” Presented at MELUS 2011. Conference Organized
by Florida Atlantic University, April 7-11, 2011.
“Founding a National Council of
Oromia: To Sketch a Roadmap for Oromo National Liberation Struggle,” paper
presented at the 30th Anniversary of Oromo Studies Association, DC, July 2016.
Works in Progress
“OROMO FOLKSONGS: Ecopoetic Approach (Theory &
Practice), Ethiopia/Northeast Africa.”
“ECOPOETICS OF PLACE: Reclaiming Finfinne,
Past & Present (Ethiopia), Paper submitted for publication, in DERT book
(Diversified Environmentalism Research Team), September, 2017.
“ETHNOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF OROMO
FOLKLORE STUDY (Part I & II),” Work in Progress.
Poems
On Ethiopia Observer
“The Metaphor of ‘Being’ Self in Exile” http://www.ethiopiaobserver.com/2016/07/the-metaphor-of-being-self-in-exile/
“Confession”
http://www.ethiopiaobserver.com/2016/06/confession/
“Solitude”
http://www.ethiopiaobserver.com/2017/09/solitude/
On Addis Standard
“Vulnerability” http://addisstandard.com/vulnerability/
Talks
“Personal Stories Are Not So
Personal. They Are Informed by the Collective Experience,” at “Art &
Refugees” Symposium Organized by the Center for the Study of Global Change, Indiana
University, Bloomington,
April 6, 2017. (https://sgis.indiana.edu/news-events/sgis-news/2017/2017-04-10-art-and-refugees.html)
“Oromo Resistance Narrative:
How it Informs the Contemporary Oromo Resistance Struggle," July 3, 2012
Oromo Community Center,
Minneapolis, MN. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLB8SnGwiWo)
Interviews
Addis Journal, 2006
https://arefe.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/interview-with-poet-asafa-tefera-dibaba/amp/
EXPERIENCE TEACHING
African Studies Program,
Indiana University, Bloomington. “Contemporary Africa” (Fall 2013 &
Spring 2014)
MLA and Folklore Collection,
Wells Library, Indexer (AY 2012-13 and Summer 2013) College of Education, Addis
Ababa University, Ethiopia (2005-2010)
Folklore Genre(s) (2005-2010)
Introduction to Folklore (Graduate) (2005-2010)
Introduction to Folklore (Undergraduate) (2005-2010) Introduction to Literature
(2005, 2007, 2009)
Verse and Drama (2009)
Literature in Language Classroom (2008)
Jimma Teachers College,
Department of English Language, Oromia, Ethiopia (1998-2001, 2004) English
Language Teaching Methodology (1998-2001)
English for Academic
Purposes (1998-2001)
Writing (2002)
Literature (2000-2001)
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
Academy of American Poets
American Folklore Society (AFS)
Collaborative Peace and Development Network
Methodspace (Connecting Research Communities) Oromo Studies Association (OSA)
Resistance Studies (Goteborg, Sweden)
Diversified Environmentalisms Research Team (DERT)
Association of African Literature (ALA)
Scholars Rescue Fund (IIE/SRF
