Alemu Tebeje Ayele

Alemu Tebeje Ayele is an Ethiopian exile journalist, poet, lyric writer, community activist and website campaigner based in London. He studied Ethiopian Languages and Literature, and Journalism at the universities of Addis Ababa and Wales respectively. He was also awarded a Diploma in Education and Training at the University of Westminster. His poems have been published in two anthologies ‘’Forever Spoken’’ and ‘’No Serenity Here’’, and other online and print literary magazines including Modern Poetry In Translation and The Missing Slate. His poem 'Greetings to the people of Europe!' was projected on public buildings in Denmark, Italy, USA and UK by Jenny Holzer in 2017. His first bilingual collection of poems, Greetings to the People of Europe, was published by Tamrat Books in 2018 and includes the script of a sketch commissioned by BBC Radio 4 for a migrant re-imagining of Homer's Odyssey, My Name is Nobody. He also recently co-translated and co-edited the very first anthology of Ethiopian poetry in English, entitled "Songs We Learn from Trees: An Anthology of Ethiopian Amharic Poetry".

He co-admins a website, www.debteraw.com, named after one of the Ethiopian literary giants, Tsegaye Gebre Medhin Lucha (a.k.a. Debteraw). Debteraw was a founding member of the EPRP, former leader of the Ethiopian Student Movement, poet and Amharic language expert. Debteraw fell into the hands of the current regime in June 1991 and was killed later on.