Acknowledgements
My thanks to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems (or versions of them) first appeared: Ambit, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London, Seam, Smiths Knoll, The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt), The Shuffle Anthology 2010/2011 and Wasafiri. 'About the fish in Lake Langano' was commended in the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2008.
Many thanks also to Fekade Azeze for permission to use lines from his book Unheard Voices: Drought, Famine and God in Ethiopian Oral Poetry (Addis Ababa University Press, 1998) in my collage poem 'To the man with a guzzler wife'. Also to Bewketu Seyoum and Alemu Tebeje for the chance to learn about Ethiopian poetry direct from two contemporary Ethiopian poets; and to Zerihun Tassew for telling me the story of 'Goat, Donkey and Dog', as well as for his help in finding the house where I lived as a boy in Addis Ababa and through it, what had happened to Abebe.
I am very grateful to Moniza Alvi and Pascale Petit for their advice and encouragement over the years; also to Michael Laskey, David and Helen Constantine, Daljit Nagra, Fred D'Aguiar, John Haynes, Jane Duran, Robert Seatter and the Thursday Group, Jo Roach, Meryl Pugh, Anne Ryland, Valerie Josephs; and Isao Miura for allowing me to use one of his beautiful paintings for the cover of this book.