Amina Elmi is a Danish poet of Somali heritage whose work brings migration, language, family memory and belonging into a charged contemporary lyric voice. Born in Somalia in 1994 and raised in Denmark from the age of three, she studied English at Aalborg University and graduated from the Copenhagen writing school Forfatterskolen in 2023. Her debut collection, Barbar [tavshedens objekt] (2023), moves between poetry and prose to explore silence, severed histories, grief, anger, love and the search for a language capable of carrying inherited experience.
Elmi’s writing combines the directness of spoken address with precise attention to intimacy and everyday life. It draws on Danish social realities and Somali and African-Islamic poetic traditions while shifting between political urgency, humour and tenderness. Her debut received Denmark’s Bogforum Debutantpris in 2023, was published in Swedish and Norwegian editions, and established her as a distinctive new voice in Scandinavian poetry.
In April 2026, Elmi and translator Bogusława Sochańska received the City of Gdańsk’s European Poet of Freedom Award for the Polish selection With All My Love. The jury highlighted her poetry’s engagement with self-determination, migration, violence, prejudice, sisterhood and care. The award, presented during the European Poet of Freedom Festival held in Gdańsk from 16 to 18 April 2026, confirms the growing international reach of a practice rooted in questions of identity, freedom and shared responsibility.