k.eltinaé

Sudanese-Nubian poet  ·  sound

k.eltinaé

the vertigo of living

Poet/Author/DJ Qahli
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k.eltinaé — past and present
About

A poet of displacement, memory, and the languages we carry into exile.

k.eltinaé is a diaspora poet of Sudanese-Nubian and Mediterranean descent, whose work is centered around otherness, cultural/geographic displacement, generational trauma, and exile. His work has appeared in Poetry International, International Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Mizna, The African American Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. His debut collection The Moral Judgement of Butterflies won The Beverly Prize for International Literature 2019 (BSPG Press) and also the Eyelands Book Award 2022 under the Published Poetry category. He is a World Literature lecturer and part-time Soul/Funk/Afrobeat Disc jockey residing in Granada, Spain.

His debut collection, The Moral Judgement of Butterflies, won the International Beverly Prize and was named a finalist for the Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Alongside the page, he performs as DJ Qahli — folding Sudanese sound, diaspora rhythm, and the night into a second voice.

1
Award-winning
debut collection
3+
International
poetry prizes
7+
Languages
written & performed
The Moral Judgement of Butterflies by k. eltinaé — book cover
The debut collection

The Moral Judgement
of Butterflies

Black Spring Press Group · 2022

A debut that maps exile as a kind of weather — poems of homeland and distance, of the body remembering what the map forgets.

  • 2023 Finalist, Luschei Prize for African PoetryThe Poetry Foundation
  • 2019 Winner, International Beverly Prize for LiteratureBlack Spring Press Group, UK
  • 2019 Shortlisted, Brunel International African Poetry Prize
i want to hold the truth between us to survive love without running.
k.eltinaé

Selected
verses

Fragments from the page — exile, language, and the long argument with home.

i

breathing exercises

we are born borderless until we touch.

ii

tirhal

we were born to chase our truths in transit.

iii

bloom

the wind scatters my tears, laughs like a djinn in the fields. when they bloom.

iv

plans

sometimes if you look hard enough at something it will bloom in your eyes & make countries for refugees no one took in.

Get in touch

For performances, collaborations & bookings

Readings, translations, commissions, and DJ sets. The fastest way to reach me is below.

Get in touch