He worked mostly in Harar, but travelled up to the then capital Ankober to sell guns to King Menelik. When a new photo is unearthed, like the one of him sitting on a terrace in Aden, discovered in a Paris brocante in 2010, I feel shocked, excited, as if I have received a postcard from my long lost brother… I also like to count the coincidences, those little points where our life-paths seem to cross over the ages: my friend Emma who lived in the house on (the then) Great College Sreet where he lodged with Verlaine before their bust-up the Grand Hôtel de l‘Univers in Paris where I always stay, and the Grand Hôtel de l‘Univers in Aden where he stayed the fact we were both commodity traders, Rimbaud coffee, me sugar…īut my closest life-connection to Rimbaud is that he lived in Ethiopia which is where I grew up. The brutal changes he put himself through, whatever the cost. The daredevil speed and appetite with which he lived. Like many Rimbaud enthusiasts, I love his poems, but also his life story. Chris Beckett explains how Rimbaud inspired the first ever anthology of Ethiopian poetry in English!
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