My Landmark poems are on walls across the world. My radio documentaries have meant sitting in the home of Gil Scott-Heron while he makes me mango juice, or interviewing The Last Poets on street corners in Harlem. From walking on stage at Paul McCartney’s book launch at the Queens Theatre or giving a workshop to homeless surfers in Durban, South Africa, I have been blessed with living my entire life as a poet. A life based on word of mouth above all. The life of a poet, and yet it only feels like it’s beginning now.

So here is Gold From The Stone: New and Selected Poems. I have been a poet since I was twelve years old. I knew it then. I know it now. My journey has been kicked and punched at different times, and to be honest I am aware that I’ve tried to sabotage it myself at times too.

The best poems are unseen and unheard by anyone other than the person who wrote them and the persons they were intended for. They are read at funerals or between lovers or between daughters and fathers. They are kept within the family. Writer, audience, performer, performance and applause. It is the perfect journey for a poem: beginning, middle and end. The closest to that is a reader and a book.

‘The idea that poetry is a minority sport has never rung true with me. Ever.’

At the start of Rebel Without Applause is the quote: ‘if you are the big tree I am the small axe.’ It is a quote from ‘Small Axe’ by Bob Marley. I was a fan of Bob Marley before I knew I was Ethiopian. My father was a pilot for Ethiopian Airlines and co-piloted The Emperor, Haile Selassie. Although my father died in 1974 I still have a picture of him in which he has the exact same ring on his finger as Bob Marley had on his hand.

An Ethiopian man said, ‘Do you know what your name means? It is an unusual name.’ I told him that I didn’t. ‘It means Why?’. If you are not from Ethiopia please don’t think Ethiopians give their children questions as names. It is an unusual name in any culture. I had no idea what it meant until I was thirty-two. How could I be anything other than a poet with a name like ‘Why’?

From Perceptions of the Pen (1985)

PERCEPTIONS OF THE PEN

Well ‘I’

Well ‘I’

Well, I am a poet and it is my life.

I would slit my wrist with a pen not a knife.

Well, I am a poet from now until then.

My life is my paper, my knife is my pen.

Mother

Mother

Mother, what will I say to you?

Will I tell you about what I’ve been through?

Mother, will you criticise?

Mother, will you see it through my eyes?

Mother, what will you say to me?