Writing Through The Cracks

Exactly two years after the outbreak of war in Sudan—a conflict largely overlooked by international media—poet and writer Najlaa Eltom invites us to reflect, reconnect, and engage critically. Through dialogue and poetry, she explores the shifting realities of Sudan and the struggles and resilience of the Sudanese people. Rather than viewing this war as an isolated event, Eltom invites us to critically reread the conflict as part of a broader imperial play; one where local struggles, regional ambitions, and global power interests interact in complex ways.

Through poetry and conversation, Eltom explores how war compromises social and cultural institutions, undermining the sovereignty of the people and their fundamental right to security and production. This crisis has not simply been met with silence on the international stage; it persists due to the complicity of classic imperial powers and new regional colonial agents.

How do these shifting power dynamics shape not only Sudan’s future but also global politics?

Join us for an evening of reading and dialogue, where Eltom’s words open space for questioning, challenging assumptions and narratives, and tracing the entanglements of war, power structures, and language.

Moderation: Ibrahim Izzeldeen


Najlaa Eltom is a Sudanese poet, writer, and translator, based in Sweden since 2012. Her work explores language, movement, and the shifting landscapes of memory. She has published three poetry collections: "Melodies of Speed", released in 2021, "The Immortal Felony with Earrings", published in 2019, and "The Doctrine of Thinness", which came out in 2007. Her work grapples with questions of exile, presence, and the fractures and continuities between past and present. Her essays and poetry have been translated into several languages, a process that, rather than fixing meaning, adds new layers of interpretation and distance.

Alongside her writing, she works in literary translation, engaging with Arabic texts that speak to histories of rupture and resilience. She holds an MA in English Literature from Stockholm University (2015). Najlaa Eltom has taken part in discussions on literature, agency, and postcoloniality across different contexts, always returning to the question of how language holds and unsettles what we think we know.

Ibrahim Izzeldeen (aka Ibrahim Algrefawi) is a German Sudanese filmmaker, blogger, digital journalist and social worker He has a bachelor's degree in environmental science and extensive experience in media and journalism with a focus on art and culture. His contributions have appeared in local and international, print and digital media such as The Guardian, Brown Book and in African argument networks. He has written and directed three successful documentaries in Sudan: JOSEPHINA (2011), produced by the Goethe Institute Sudan, ALTERNATIVE SPACES (2016), produced by the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) and MIRRORS OF FEAR, produced by the Doha Film Institute. The three films deal with various cultural, social and political issues. In the last two years he has been working on migration, asylum stories from an individual and artistic perspective and made some experimental videos on these topics.