[11/20/25] Kebede, Mihret / Moschovakis, Anna (tr.): #evolutionarypoems

Circumference Books, paperback

Publication Date: November 20, 2025

Publisher Marketing: evolutionarypoems is a translation of Mihret Kebede's Amharic poem sequence by Anna Moschovakis and the author. #evolutionarypoems is part of a collaboration between Kebede and Moschovakis that began when they met in Addis Ababa in 2009. #evolutionarypoems is an unfinished and evolving conversation made up of many unkept promises. #evolutionarypoems contains translations but is not a translation. #evolutionarypoems is a bilingual book that extends beyond the book. #evolutionarypoems is a record of Ethiopia's recent and current socio-political conditions in a critical voice of a poet and her friend. #evolutionarypoems is incomplete. #evolutionarypoems is research. #evolutionarypoems is a search. #evolutionarypoems is a commitment to a willingness to fail. #evolutionarypoems is an invitation to a standing date. #evolutionarypoems is a speaking in silence. #evolutionarypoems is resistance in silence.

About the book, Uljana Wolf writes, “At once archive of the present and activation of silenced histories, Mihret Kebede’s #evolutionarypoems powerfully ignites an imaginary of resistance in order to change the rules of the game: “let me become flame / I am the people … not fuel, nor tool.” In this first English edition, Anna Moschovakis’s superbly energizing translation from the Amharic—document of sustained friendship and dialogue—is an expansion of that collective imaginary.”

Mihret Kebede is a multidisciplinary artist and poet from Ethiopia. Her art and writing has appeared in Circumference Magazine, Lyrikline, Modernist Art in Ethiopia, Washington Square Review, World Literature Today, and elsewhere, including the anthologies Wax and Gold: Poetry Jazz and Songs We Learn from Trees. The recipient of an award from the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture for her art and organizing work, she co-founded Tobiya Poetic Jazz, Netsa Art Village Artists Collective, and the Addis International Video Art Festival. Kebede is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. This is her first book of poetry.

anna moschovakis works with poetry and prose as a writer, editor, translator, publisher, teacher, and designer. Her six books include An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth (2024) and They and We Will Get into Trouble for This (2016). Her translation of David Diop’s novel At Night All Blood Is Black was awarded the 2021 International Booker Prize. She is a longtime member of the publishing collective Ugly Duckling Presse, and recently, she launched Dirt Editions, an informally distributed pamphlet press.