Al-Mala'ika's 1947 poem "Cholera" is conventionally cited as the first published free-verse poem in Arabic. Her theoretical book Qadaya al-Shi'r al-Mu'asir (Issues of Contemporary Poetry, 1962) supplied the manifesto and the metrical analysis for the new movement. She left Iraq for Cairo after Saddam's rise and died there in 2007.
Recurring themes
the founding of free-verse Arabic
women in modern Arabic poetry
the critic-poet
Baghdad and the long Iraqi twentieth century
Selected works
- 1947Lover of the Night
- 1949Sparks and Ashes
- 1957Bottom of the Wave
- 1962Issues of Contemporary Poetry
- 1968The Tree of the Moon