Books by Charles Cantalupo

In 1998 and 2000, Lawrence F. Sykes (1931-2020) and Charles Cantalupo travel together in Eritrea. Sykes in Eritrea offers a visual record and an account in poetry of their journey. Sykes''s experience as a longtime American photographer, graphic artist, professor, and citizen of the world prepares him for a unique encounter with a unique place. Cantalupo''s familiarity with Eritrea and its culture, including its writers and poets, provides him with an inimitable sense of place.

The Woodstock Sandal and Further Steps reveals the growth of a poet''s mind is inseparable from where, when, and with whom these poems take place over fifty years'' time. Joining poetic line and story line, lyric and length, autobiography and cultural history, The Woodstock Sandal and Further Steps, like all great poetry, takes steps never taken before.

"Charles Cantalupo has written a book that crosses all the genres: Where War Was: Poems and Translations from Eritrea is part translation, part reflection, part epic, illustrated with starkly beautiful photographic images by Lawrence Sykes. Cantalupo's poetry recounts his own journey in Eritrea, and his translations of poems by Eritrean writers are authentic and memorable." - Alexandra Dugdale, Editor, Modern Poetry in Translation Charles Cantalupo has two previous collections of poetry - Light the Lights and Animal Woman and Other Spirits. His translations of Eritrean poetry include We Have Our Voice, We Invented the Wheel, and Who Needs a Story, and he has written War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry. Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at Penn State University, he is also the author of books on Thomas Hobbes and Ng¿g¿ wa Thiong'o and a memoir, Joining Africa - From Anthills to Asmara.

Oncludes writing by Charles Cantalupo spanning roughly twenty-five years. Chronologically, it begins in 1993 with the first time he interviews Ngugi wa Thiong''o and ends in 2016, when Cantalupo last interviews him. In between, the decades reveal Cantalupo as a writer moving from a primarily Euro-American literary and cultural viewpoint to a continuum with African literatures and languages. Compelled by their power and their translation, he becomes deeply engaged with Eritrea, while also probing the process of translation itself.

War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry focuses on Eritrean written poetry from roughly the last three decades of the twentieth century. The poems appear in the anthology Who Needs a Story? Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Tigrinya, Tigre and Arabic from which a selection is offered here in their original scripts of Ge'ez or Arabic, and in English translation. Who Needs a Story? is the first anthology of contemporary poetry from Eritrea ever published, and War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry is the first book on the subject. Therefore, the groundbreaking effort of the former warrants a discussion of its means of cultural production. All of the poets in Who Needs a Story? participated in the Eritrean struggle for independence (1961-91) as freedom fighters and/or as supporters in the Eritrean diaspora. Thus, contemporary Eritrean poetry divides itself between experiences of war and peace, although one can contain the other as well. War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry also includes an extended analysis of one of Eritrea's most famous contemporary poets Reesom Haile, as an example of the kind of extended analysis that many of the poets of Who Needs a Story? should stimulate and, last but not least, a meditation on how the author, a non-native speaker, personally becomes involved in Eritrean poetry translation.