Adbourahman A. Waberi: A Translator's Note

Adbourahman A. Waberi:A Translator's Note Nancy Naomi Carlson (bio) Abdourahman A. Waberi, whose place of birth is what is now called Djibouti, a former French colony in Northeast Africa, is a self-described nomad. After leaving Djibouti, this tiniest of countries in mainland Africa, he has traveled the globe. Now an Associate Professor at The George Washington University where he teaches every other semester, he balances the year with visiting professorships in such countries as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. I have been translating Waberi's poems for over a decade, and at the time we first communicated, he was teaching at The George Washington University, just a few metro stops away from the University of the District of Columbia, an HBCU, where I was training graduate clinical mental health and school counselors. We met at the Starbucks at the Van Ness metro stop—the first of several meetings—where our discussion included our collaboration, the themes of his work, the overlap between his prose and poetry, and his unique spirituality which draws on the Koran, Buddhism, Sufism, Christianity, Judaism, and other beliefs. We immediately hit it off, collaborating on a successful application for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate his first poetry collection, The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper (Seagull Books, 2015). "Open-Air" comes from Waberi's third volume of poetry, Quand on n'a que la terre (When We Only Have the Earth University of Nebraska Press, 2025), for which I've received a translation grant from the Albertine Fund. The poem is ostensibly located at Eastern Market, in Washington, DC, on a Saturday morning, but quickly transports the reader to another dimension, through the introduction of "the daughter of Yemanja," related to a major water spirit from the Yoruba religion, who transcends time. She asks, "Why do people spend their lives running around in circles/like carousel horses on steel rails?" Sharing her philosophy that "God needs us more than we need him," she exhorts us to be mindful and, sowing joy, teaches us a new way to live. End Page 233 Nancy Naomi Carlson Nancy Naomi Carlson's translation of Khal Torabully's Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull) won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her second full-length poetry collection, as well as Delicates, her co-translation of Wendy Guerra, were noted in The New York Times. Author of fourteen titles (nine translated), including her recent Piano in the Dark, she's a recipient of two translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms. Carlson is the translations editor for On the Seawall. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press