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This year's publication of We Have Our Voice: Selected Poems of Reesom Haile (Red Sea Press) signaled an historic first. Never before had a bilingual, Tigrinya / English book of poetry ever been published.

Asmarino.com, working together with Red Sea Press, is proud to present yet another historic first: the CD (Vol 1 & 2) of We Have Our Voice: Selected Poems of Reesom Haile -- the complete text of 56 poems read in the original Tigrinya by their author, the renowned Eritrean poet, Reesom Haile, and in English by the book's co-translator, Charles Cantalupo.

Reesom Haile is a prime example of a growing movement of African authors who are writing in their own Afric

an languages. This rise of African vernaculars, paralleling the rise of truly independent and democratic African nations, promises a twenty-first century that will be the African century for literature. The world needs to hear Africa's best authors speaking in Africa's own languages.

We Have Our Voice stands at a great beginning. Reesom Haile's famous refrain of "Alowuna, Alowana," "We have. We have," having entered the minds and hearts of Eritreans at home and abroad, can now be heard around the world. Yet as Reesom Haile himself puts it, he is only bringing "poetry back to where it belongs -- up front and from the heart."

Working directly with Reesom Haile, the American poet and author, Charles Cantalupo, offers English versions of Reesom Haile's work in an attempt to join -- a distinctly Tigrinya concept for the creation of poetry -- two languages and two traditions in a common effort of poetry that is modern yet classical, epigrammatic and enduring.

According to Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whom

many consider Africa's greatest living writer, "The poet Reesom Haile talks of the arrival of a next generation knowing many languages. This new generation accepts the reality of an Africa of many languages and is determined to create a shared legacy in them. Dialogue between African languages is vital. But so is that between African languages and non-African languages. This collaboration between Reesom Haile and Charles Cantalupo shows one way in which that beautiful legacy can be shared."

Considering the poems of We Have Our Voice, the greatest living poet of America, Amiri Baraka, says this: "Reesom Haile's spare poetic line carries the weight of incisive image, narrative clarity, irony plus a droll humor that speaks even after you finished reading": to which can now be added, and after you have finished hearing.

Great poetry has a universal music, whether in its original language or translation. Reesom Haile says about his own poetic beginnings that they start "with z-ezm! ebum! b-ebum! -- which is our drum, our expression of happiness. That is all the struggle is about: that finally we can be happy. I start when I go back to the sound of z-ezm! ebum! -- to the...everyday songs....then the words start flowing in."

In the same spirit of struggle and happiness, the historic, new CD of We Have Our Voice invites the world to join in: