Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers June 2025
Modern Arab Women’s Poetry: A Voice of Resistance and Resilience
Guest editorial by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Poetry has always pulsed through the veins of Arab culture, serving as both mirror and compass for societies navigating the complex terrain of tradition and modernity. For Arab women, the poetic tradition has been particularly transformative – a sanctuary where silenced voices find resonance and a battleground where patriarchal structures face relentless challenge.
The Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika’s haunting lines from Cholera (1947) – “In the darkness, in the silence, the wails rise… Who will tell the mother her child is gone?” – marked a seismic shift in Arabic literature. Not only did she pioneer free verse in Arabic poetry, but she demonstrated how women could transform personal anguish into powerful social commentary, using their pens to document collective trauma through an unflinchingly feminine perspective.
The mid-20th century witnessed Arab women poets radically redefining their literary landscape. Palestinian poet Fadwa Tuqan, whose work earned her the title “Poet of Palestine,” exemplified this transformation in Enough for Me (1967): “Enough for me to die on her earth/be buried in her/to melt and vanish into her soil/then sprout forth as a flower.” Tuqan’s genius lay in her ability to intertwine nationalist resistance with intimate corporeal imagery, positioning the female body as both metaphor and medium for political expression. This revolutionary approach created space for subsequent generations to explore increasingly bold themes.
Syrian poet Maram al-Masri’s I Look at You (2004) pushed boundaries further with its raw eroticism: “I look at you/as a starving woman looks at bread/as a prisoner looks at the horizon.” Such verses didn’t merely describe desire – they weaponized it, asserting women’s right to articulate their own sexuality on their own terms.
The contemporary landscape of Arab women’s poetry reveals an extraordinary diversity of voices grappling with urgent political realities. The late Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada, tragically killed during Israel’s 2023 bombardment of Gaza, left behind verses that pulse with defiant love: “I shelter you, Gaza, with my last heartbeat/with the ink of my veins I write you.” Her work exemplifies how Arab women poets document war not as detached observers but as embodied participants, their words forged in the crucible of personal and collective survival.
Egyptian poet Fatima Naoot’s A Sheep’s Life (2015) demonstrates another form of bravery, confronting religious authoritarianism at great personal risk: “They told me: Be a sheep/The butcher’s knife is kinder than the wolf’s teeth/I said: I prefer the howl of wolves/to the silence of the flock.” For these poets, writing is never merely an artistic act – it’s an existential stance, a refusal to be silenced or subdued.
The thematic breadth of modern Arab women’s poetry reflects the complexity of their lived experiences. Saudi poet Hissa Hilal’s explosive appearance on Million’s Poet with The Chaos of Fatwas (2010) – “I have seen evil in the eyes of fatwas/at the doorways of darkness/where they shroud the light of day” – demonstrated how poetry could become a public challenge to religious extremism, even within conservative societies.
Meanwhile, diaspora poets like Somali-British Warsan Shire have given voice to the migrant experience with visceral immediacy: “no one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark.” Their work complicates simplistic narratives of Arab womanhood, revealing layered identities shaped by displacement, memory, and cultural hybridity. Tunisian poet Amina Saïd’s The Saffron Lady (1999) represents yet another dimension, weaving together Islamic mysticism and feminist consciousness: “She undresses the sky at dusk/with hennaed hands/teaching the moon/how to wear its light.” These poets collectively demonstrate how Arab women are reclaiming and reimagining their spiritual and cultural heritage.
The institutional challenges facing Arab women poets remain formidable. Censorship boards across the Arab world routinely suppress works deemed politically or morally transgressive. State surveillance and religious fatwas create climates of fear, while mainstream literary circles often dismiss women’s writing as lacking in universal significance. The Palestinian poet Maya Abu Al-Hayyat articulates this struggle in The Cake: “They told me my poems are too small/that they don’t tackle the big issues… as if the occupation of my body/isn’t the original occupation.” Despite these obstacles, poets are finding innovative ways to circumvent restrictions.
Digital platforms have become crucial alternative spaces, with Instagram poets like Bahraini American poet Amina Atiq and Kuwaiti poet Mona Kareem building international followings. Kareem’s So You Know You’re Not Alone (2016) captures the diasporic experience in haunting fragments: “This is how we love:/with exile’s grammar/every verb irregular.” Such works demonstrate how technology enables new forms of creative expression and solidarity.
The future of Arab women’s poetry lies in its fearless hybridity and adaptability. Younger generations are increasingly blending poetic forms with multimedia art, performance, and activism. Syrian poet Golan Haji’s collaborations with visual artists, or Lebanese poet Joumana Haddad’s experimental typography, point toward an exciting interdisciplinary future.
The rise of collectives like the Palestinian Women’s Poetry Network and online journals such as Jadaliyya suggests growing institutional support for these voices. Most importantly, the poetry itself continues evolving, as seen in the work of emerging voices like Emirati poet Afra Atiq, who blends Nabati traditions with spoken word, or Sudanese American poet Safia Elhillo, whose The January Children explores postcolonial identity through fragmented lyricism.
What makes contemporary Arab women’s poetry uniquely powerful is its refusal to be categorized or contained. It is at once deeply personal and resolutely political, rooted in tradition yet radically innovative. As Syrian poet Najat Abdul Samad wrote in When I Am Overcome by Weakness (2016): “I bandage it with the outcry of a mother/who lost her child to a bombing.” These words capture the essential duality of this poetry – it is both wound and suture, bearing witness to brokenness while insisting on the possibility of healing.
In classrooms and protest marches, on social media and in underground journals, Arab women’s poetry continues to “sprout forth as a flower” from the hardest ground, as Fadwa Tuqan prophesied. Its resilience lies not despite adversity, but precisely through its unflinching engagement with it – a lesson in how art can survive, and even thrive, under the most oppressive conditions.
For readers worldwide, engaging with this poetry isn’t passive consumption; it’s an act of solidarity with voices that refuse to be erased, and a recognition that their struggle for expression is inseparable from the universal human fight for dignity and freedom.
© Dr Salwa Gouda
Dr Salwa Gouda is an accomplished Egyptian literary translator, critic, and academic affiliated with the English Language and Literature Department at Ain Shams University. Holding a PhD in English literature and criticism, Dr. Gouda pursued her education at both Ain Shams University and California State University, San Bernardino. She has authored several academic works, including Lectures in English Poetry and Introduction to Modern Literary Criticism, among others. Dr. Gouda also played a significant role in translating The Arab Encyclopedia for Pioneers, a comprehensive project featuring poets, philosophers, historians, and literary figures, conducted under the auspices of UNESCO. Recently, her poetry translations have been featured in a poetry anthology published by Alien Buddha Press in Arizona, USA. Her work has also appeared in numerous international literary magazines, further solidifying her contributions to the field of literary translation and criticism.
This editorial is exactly what we need to read. Poets are succeeding in building bridges where politicians flounder or fail to understand.