Nazik al-Malaika

Nazik al-Malaika was born in Baghdad to a prominent literary family; her mother was a poet and her father an academic. Educated at the Higher Teachers Training College in Baghdad and Princeton University, she published her historic poem 'Al-Kulira' (Cholera) in 1947, which broke with the centuries-old two-hemistich classical form to create modern Arabic free verse (al-shi'r al-hurr).

Beyond her poignant lyricism, Malaika was a formidable theorist whose critical work Issues of Contemporary Poetry codified the rhythmic, structural, and aesthetic foundations of modernist Arabic verse. She taught literature across Iraq, Lebanon, and Kuwait before spending her final years in Cairo.