{"id":304206,"date":"2016-04-18T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2016\/04\/18\/the-nomads-my-brothers-go-out-to-drink-from-the-big-dipper-by-abdourahman-a-waberi-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T14:47:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T14:47:12","slug":"the-nomads-my-brothers-go-out-to-drink-from-the-big-dipper-by-abdourahman-a-waberi-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2016\/04\/18\/the-nomads-my-brothers-go-out-to-drink-from-the-big-dipper-by-abdourahman-a-waberi-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper” by Abdourahman A. Waberi [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win<\/a> series, is by Tess Lewis, BTBA<\/span> judge, writer, translator from the French and German, and an advisory editor of the Hudson Review.<\/em><\/a> We will be running two (or more!) of these posts every business day leading up to the announcement of the finalists.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper<\/em><\/a> by Abdourahman A. Waberi, translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson (Djibouti, Seagull Books)<\/b><\/p>\n

for miniature republic
\nparsimonious poems
\nEngravings<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Djibouti writer Abdourahman Waberi\u2019s name will be familiar to BTBA<\/span> followers for his novel Transit<\/em>, short-listed in 2013. The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper<\/em> is Waberi\u2019s first collection of poetry and there is a palpable sense of urgency to these lean poems. Size, of course, is not a reliable indicator of impact or import. Waberi sees his small native land as part of the cradle of mankind, of homo erectus<\/em>, to be exact. Here, humans first stood, first put one foot in front of the other, joining gesture, movement and breath into a kind of freedom. And it is that instant, that conjunction, that inspires Waberi to imagine man making \u201cthat first gesture in the bed of [his] pages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing poems, for Waberi, is \u201ca matter of strictest necessity.\u201d He sows these \u201cmodest pebbles\u201d in readers\u2019 paths, not to guide them\u2014Waberi is suggestive, not prescriptive\u2014but as markers to use in charting their own way to a meaningful life free from the tides of economic, financial, ecological, and spiritual excess that are washing over the world. \u201cAnother path of life is possible, apparent in the creases and folds of this collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

These spare poems are laconic but evocative, conjuring up desert landscapes, a nomadic tribe, or his small country\u2019s struggles with civil war and extremism. He sees the wind as a calligrapher, covering the dunes with words.<\/p>\n

brush in hand the wind sketches
\nlandscapes of words
\nsculpted mountain slopes
\nshadow plains
\nhorizon enclaves<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a landscape that has witnessed much suffering, great and small. The Somali bullet,<\/p>\n

. . . bloom of a new genus
\nthat bans
\nall transports of joy
\nall shedding of tears in the name of love
\ndrawn from the bittersweet milk of peace<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

is countered by a lame herdsman who laments<\/p>\n

with my skinny legs
\nI\u2019ve crossed vast desert sands
\nwith my short strides
\nI\u2019ve kept up with my camels\u2019 pace
\nso why should I care
\nif my shrew of a wife slanders my name!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unsparing in their frankness, Waberi\u2019s poems are also finely attuned to the beauties and joys in a harsh landscape of \u201ctortured geology\u201d and happy simplicity. Waberi enjoins us to \u201clet nomadic words live\u201d for they, as much as any others, can open up new worlds and lead us to \u201cthe tree of knowledge [which] has wings to surpass the horizon.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win series, is by Tess Lewis, BTBA judge, writer, translator from the French and German, and an advisory editor of the Hudson Review. We will be running two (or more!) of these posts every business day leading up to the announcement of the finalists.   The Nomads, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[20006,18416,35996,61536,49386,64376,64366,1646,64356,37876],"class_list":["post-304206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-abdourahman-waberi","tag-best-translated-book-award","tag-btba","tag-btba-2016","tag-btba-poetry","tag-go-out-to-drink-from-the-big-dipper","tag-my-brothers","tag-review","tag-the-nomads","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396942,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304206\/revisions\/396942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}