Live Encounters Arab Women Poets & Writers June 2026
Mare of Secrets, poems Heba Al Ghonaimy.
Translated from Arabic by Dr. Salwa Gouda.
Mare of Secrets
A mare of secrets
a green foal
born of oak trees
leaps between valleys in silence.
Two small eyes play with the void
and conquer.
She grazes with the confidence of sages,
has lived a thousand turns of the wheel,
wears the light of whiteness,
and silver, stubborn hair.
She stirs the wind
with her scepter.
Night Journey
Night journey to your heaven —
a thirst for forever.
A love the planets take refuge in,
and the stone’s last will.
A seer’s withdrawal into stubborn symbols,
hidden valleys,
the mountain’s treasure,
the blaze of a celestial kingdom on the desert’s body.
Woman on the Covenant of Blue
The clarity of color unleashed
flowering between skin and veins.
It grows wild from the body’s prisons,
sighs with longing for the sky’s reins
where nothing exists but Him.
A praise rocks the stars,
summons the crescent moons
on pilgrimage to paradise’s palaces.
A color without beginning
a color against whose shoulders we collapse and weep,
like one returning to their homeland
after the road’s hardships.
The clarity of silence: the femininity of blue.
The motherhood of the universe pillows itself on blue.
No woman is sacred
except the one who keeps faith with blue.
Silk Collar
A silk collar
grows between skin and veins,
wraps hearts in velvety love,
radiates warmth.
Tenderness rivals it,
desire ignites it,
mercy plants it.
Its fruits are golden.
Wait
blue is coming to wrap you in richness.
Enter blue’s depths
so it may rock you like a butterfly queen
or like her peacock,
strutting white in her light.
© Heba Al Ghonaimy
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.
Heba Al Ghonaimy holds a Bachelor’s degree in Tourism & Hotels (Helwan University, 1995), a High Diploma in Ancient Egyptian Archaeology (Cairo University, 1998), a Master’s degree in Mythology from Cairo University (2004), and a PhD in Egyptian Archaeology from Mansoura University (2017), with a thesis focused on the social and political implications of fourth-millennium BCE artwork and public buildings in Egypt. Their expertise spans experiential soft skills training, adult teaching in archaeology and Egyptian history, tourism guidance assessments, and writing on Egyptology and culture. With 20 years of freelance tour guiding experience (1997–2017), they have also worked as a lecturer, trainer, safari consultant, writer, published author of novels and poetry, art curator for six exhibitions, and cultural seminar organizer.