Amina Elmi, a Danish poet of Somali origin, is this year’s winner of the City of Gdańsk Literary Award ‘European Poet of Freedom’. The jury honoured her volume With All My Love, selected and translated by Bogusława Sochańska. The winner’s ardent and deeply engaged poetry is a reminder that rebellion without love is impossible – commitment to the affairs of the world springs from a profound care for all that is beautiful, fragile, just and authentic. At 32, Amina Elmi is the youngest winner of the European Poet of Freedom Award to date. The award ceremony will take place on 17 April during the European Poet of Freedom Festival (16–18 April).
The jury of the City of Gdańsk Literary Award ‘European Poet of Freedom’ met in Gdańsk on 6 March 2026 in the following composition: Anna Czekanowicz, Krzysztof Czyżewski (chair), Cezary Łasiczka, Stanisław Rosiek, Anda Rottenberg, Michał Rusinek, Beata Stasińska, Olga Tokarczuk (attending online), and Andrzej Jagodziński (non-voting secretary to the jury). The jurors selected the winner out of six volumes shortlisted for the 2024–2026 edition.
The formal and subject diversity of the shortlisted volumes, combined with the consistently high artistic standard of the poetry, gave rise to an engaged debate among the jurors. Many strands of that conversation concerned the directions in which the language of contemporary poetry is developing: the redefinition of boundaries shaped by the traditions of European poetry, a return to classical models, and the search for authentic personal idioms. After nearly four hours of discussion, the jury decided to award the prize to Amina Elmi and her translator, Bogusława Sochańska.
In the reasoning behind the verdict, we read:
Born in Somalia, the Danish poet Amina Elmi studied English in Aalborg and graduated from the Copenhagen writers’ school. She is well acquainted with European culture and moves through it with ease, and yet she has not so far found a place of her own within Danish society.
The poetry collection With All My Love is a moving testimony to the fate of an immigrant who is rejected and excluded, and who longs to find a home in Europe and take responsibility for it. In her rebellion, she holds up a mirror to us, while at the same time extending a hand, opening a path towards a shared life and struggle, as well as a love free from social violence, as evidenced by her beautiful erotic poems, pure in their lyricism.
Amina Elmi’s affecting poems are an angry yet empathetic voice of the global majority living in Europe. This voice has often been heard among the finalists of the Gdańsk award, and now, for the first time, it reaches for the highest honour of the European Poet of Freedom.
Winners’ profiles:
AMINA ELMI (b. 1994) is a Danish poet of Somali descent. She studied English at Aalborg University and graduated from the Copenhagen writers’ academy Forfatterskolen. Her acclaimed debut poetry collection, Barbar [tavshedens objekt] (Barbarian [the object of silence]), was published in 2023, receiving the prestigious Danish debut award. Soon after, it was released in Sweden and Norway. Among other distinctions, the volume received the prestigious Danish debut award Bogforums Debutantpris (2023).
BOGUSŁAWA SOCHAŃSKA (b. 1955) is a translator, essayist and publisher. A graduate of Danish philology at Adam Mickiewicz University, she workedas an assistant and lecturer at its Department of Scandinavian Studies from 1980 to 1995. From 1995 to 1999, she served as attaché and cultural counsellor at the Polish embassy in Copenhagen, and later as director of the Danish Cultural Institute in Poland (1999–2020). Since 2021, she has run the Driada School of Scandinavian Languages and co-managed the Driada Publishing House. Sochańska is a member of the Polish Writers’ Association and the Polish Literary Translators Association.
Jakub Kornhauser on With All My Love:
Amina Elmi writes with ardour about the most fundamental matters: the right to self-determination, the constant search for one’s own place and identity, responsibility for one’s words and actions, sisterhood, love and, finally, violence, war and prejudice, including those motivated by religion. She does so from the perspective of a migrant, a Danish woman of Somali descent, but also of someone who has more to say about the world than others – those who, benefiting from comfort, do not have to fight for anything. At the same time, the poet effortlessly reconciles the categorical nature of a political stance with a surprising gentleness of description – particularly when she speaks of those closest to her, focusing on small, genre-like scenes. She then reveals herself as a tender observer of everyday life. Translator Bogusława Sochańska copes superbly with the diversity of Elmi’s poetics, interweaving subtle, ‘family’ sequences with passages of a sneering, mocking tone. She is able to capture the musicality of the phrasing, its spoken, sometimes shouted character, as well as the multiplicity of references to Danish socio-political reality and to cultural intertexts. The result is impressive both because of the artistic merits of Elmi’s poetry and its powerful, topical message.
Six poetry books were shortlisted for this year’s edition of the Award finale:
Amina Elmi, With All My Love – selected and translated from Danish by Bogusława Sochańska;
Nora Iuga, The Circle’s Captivity – translated from Romanian by Enormi Stationis;
Laima Kreivytė, States of Weightlessness – selected and translated from Lithuanian by Dominika Jagiełka;
Luigi Nacci, How Light Passes. Poems from 2004–2024 – selected and translated from Italian by Joanna Ganobis;
Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise – translated from English by Bartosz Wójcik;
Alicia Elsbeth Stallings, The Other Side of the Detail. Poems from 1999–2024 – selected and translated from English by Janusz Solarz.
In the current edition of the Award, the competition was open to translators working from English, Danish and Faroese, Greek, Lithuanian, Romanian and Italian. Importantly, it is the translators themselves who submit poets writing in one of the languages specified for a given edition.
Read more about the finalists of the 2026 edition.
About the Award
The ‘European Poet of Freedom’ Gdańsk Literary Award is presented every two years. Its aim is to promote poetic phenomena of high artistic value that engage with one of the most important themes of the contemporary world: freedom. In each edition, the Award is given to the author and translator of the distinguished volume. The Award also carries a financial prize: honoured poets receive PLN 100,000, while translators receive PLN 20,000.
Publishing series
The competition is accompanied by a publishing series that presents translations of the shortlisted volumes. It currently comprises 63 bilingual titles, forming the most extensive library of contemporary poetry written in European languages in Poland.
The volumes in this edition differ in their poetic idiolects and the lived experiences of their authors, yet they are united by an extraordinary sensitivity to the concerns of the present day. In the newest series, we have introduced a new feature: each book includes an afterword written by its translator.
European Poet of Freedom Festival
This year’s awards will be presented on 17 April during a ceremony on the Main Stage of the Wybrzeże Theatre. The gala will be directed by Katarzyna Minkowska, and the evening will be hosted by Katarzyna Kasia. The event forms part of the programme of the European Poet of Freedom Festival, Points of Contact. From 16 to 18 April, we invite audiences to Gdańsk for meetings, workshops and lectures devoted to poetry and to the search for common ground in a world marked by division and crisis. This year’s festival programme has been created by Magdalena Kicińska and Małgorzata Lebda.
Read the festival announcement.
Previous winners of the Award:
Monika Herceg, Lovostaj. (2024), translated from Croatian into Polish by Aleksandra Wojtaszek;
Marianna Kiyanovska, The Voices of Babyn Yar (2022), translated from Ukrainian into Polish by Adam Pomorski;
Luljeta Lleshanaku, Water and Carbon (2022), translated from Albanian into Polish by Dorota Horodyska;
Sinéad Morrissey, On Balance (2020), translated from English into Polish by Magda Heydel;
Linda Vilhjálmsdóttir, Freedom (2018), translated from Icelandic into Polish by Jacek Godek;
Ana Blandiana, My A4 Homeland (2016), translated into Polish from Romanian by Joanna Kornaś-Warwas;
Dorta Jagić, A Sofa on the Market Square (2014), translated from Croatian into Polish by Małgorzata Wierzbicka;
Durs Grünbein, A Misanthrope on Capri (2012), translated from German into Polish by Tomasz Kopacki;
Uladzimir Arlou, A Ferry across the La Manche (2010), translated from Belarusian into Polish by Adam Pomorski.
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Organisers, funding
The European Poet of Freedom Award is funded by the City of Gdańsk.
The organiser of the festival and award, and the publisher of the EPF Nominations series, is the City Culture Institute.
The publication of Amina Elmi’s All My Love was co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund.
The project is financed by a targeted grant funded by the City of Gdańsk.
The graphic uses a photo of the Poet by Sara Galbiati, taken for Gyldendal Medie 2023; a photo of the Jury and photographs of the EPoF volumes by Bartosz Bańka.