Rooted in Somali. Routed through Italy. Rerouted to Edmonton.

Biography

In my own words.

I arrived in Edmonton at eight years old with no English.

My family had fled the Somali Civil War and spent time in Italy before we landed in Edmonton in 1992.

That experience shaped almost everything that followed.

My name carries that forward: knowledge and nomadic, a way of moving through the world. Grounded enough to build something, curious enough to keep questioning it.

Words became part of that process.

In 2011 I won the Canadian Spoken Word Championship with Team Edmonton. In 2017 I was appointed Edmonton’s 7th Poet Laureate, representing the city’s literary community.

But much of my work has happened far from a stage.

For 15 years I’ve worked with K–12 students, at home and abroad, using poetry, storytelling, humour, conversation and creative exercises to help young people find language for what they already know and feel. I walk into every classroom with the same belief: students don’t need permission to become writers. They need the chance to see that they already are.

That work extends into my community life.

I’m a former board member of the Alberta Law Enforcement Review Board, the provincial tribunal that hears appeals about police conduct. I chaired the Edmonton Arts Council’s Equity Committee from 2014 to 2017, I advise the National Council of Canadian Muslims, and I’ve led Breath In Poetry, Edmonton’s spoken word collective, since 2009.

My training, listed below, lets me move between humour and hard subjects without losing the room.

I was a refugee kid in an Edmonton classroom, searching for the right English word. Years later, I became the poet representing that same city.

I live by a simple rule: you can’t control the world. You can control how you interact with it.

Media, journalists, and event organizers: short-bio language and images are available in the Press Kit.