Todd Fredson
Photo by Lee Harmon
Bio
Todd Fredson is a poet, scholar, and translator of Afro-francophone and West African literature. He has made French to English translations of two books by Ivorian poet Josue Guebo: Think of Lampedusa and My country, tonight. Fredson is currently working with Azo Vauguy to translate from French and Bété to English Vauguy's book-length poem, Zakwato, which is an adaptation of a myth from the Bété ethnic group in the Ivory Coast. Fredson was a 2015-16 Fulbright Fellow to the Ivory Coast. The future Has an Appointment with the Dawn will be published by the University of Nebraska as part of its African Poetry Book Series.
I’m grateful for the NEA Translation Fellowship and hope it will bring visibility to the West African poets I’ve been translating, as well as the presses who have been doing the publishing—Action Books, the African Poetry Book Series at the University of Nebraska. Literary work translated out of Sub-Saharan Africa is rare, and women, even in the original languages, are drastically underrepresented. Tanella Boni is a foundational figure in African literature but has only a handful of poems translated into English, so I’m excited that the NEA offered support for this translation of her collection, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn, which reckons with the Ivory Coast’s recent ethnic violence.
From The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn by Tanella Boni
[translated from the French]
And the signs of the coming rupture
tiptoe across your lips
your bursts of laughter kindle kindness
the complexion of your soul
tints the transparent light
balances the resistance of the sky
a strongbox in the corner of the heart
opens doors behind which words of happiness
have been hoarded
and the day husks these remarks
like an ancestor in the shade of a ficus
who has gone astray in the streets of the city
About Tanella Boni
Tanella Boni (b. 1954) is one of the most prominent poets, novelists, essayists, and philosophers of francophone Africa, and yet, only a handful of her poems are available in English. Published in 2011 and characterized by its spare lyricism, the 86-page collection The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn is divided into two sections: "Land of Hope" and "The Assassinated Life." The collection reckons with the Ivory Coast's rupture as ethnic violence and civil war overwhelmed daily life in the country through the first decade of the new millennium.