Podcast

Yohannes Tesfamichael

Cadence From a Lone Traveler
CCA MFA, 2020

*Video Content Coming Soon*

In this podcast, Yohannes reads three poems beginning with "Cadence From a Lone Traveler."‍

“All these poems were written between September and December of 2019. That was in the time when I was, for the first time, fully committed to my aspiration of being true to myself in the sense of freeing the writer in me  - by virtue of being in the 'freer' America. My faith that the universal human connection would always transcend any barriers or bias arising from differences in culture, identity, and the lived experience came to a difficult test.  The difficulty of finding a community when I didn't even have the capacity to either amend or explain away the reality frightened me. My faith survived just fine, but the magnified fear in the loneliness of not ever rediscovering another community was terrifying. I believe that these were my attempts to cope through the redemptive power of poetry as I had always done.” —Yohannes Tesfamichael

Yohannes Tesfamichael is a fiction writer, and a poet. While living in his home country, Eritrea, and professionally working as a civil engineer, he had published many short stories and poems until he went into exile in 2013. His current writing, sometimes, draws from his existential crisis in Eritrea, in exile, and in the in-between. Other times, he writes in the hope of finding or creating his own, unnamed place. When not writing or thinking about it, maintaining his goofiness and his spiritual health is important to him. Yohannes stays in Oakland, and has recently earned an MFA in Creative writing from California College of the Arts. Currently, he is working on a collection of short stories and a novel.
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