Nazik al-Malaika (Arabic:نازك الملائكة; 23 August 1923 – 20 June 2007^[1]) was anIraqi poet. Al-Malaika is noted for being among the firstArabic poets to usefree verse.^[2]

Al-Malaika was born in Baghdad to a cultured family.^[3] Her motherSalma al-Malaika was also a poet, and her father was a teacher. She wrote her first poem at the age of 10.^[2] During her life, she studied English and French literature, Latin, and Greek poetry.^[4] Al-Malaika graduated in 1944 from the College of Arts in Baghdad and later completed a master's degree incomparative literature at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison with a Degree of Excellence.^[5] She entered the Institute of Fine Arts and graduated from the Department of Music in 1949. In 1959 she earned a Master of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the United States, and she was appointed professor at theUniversity of Baghdad, theUniversity of Basrah, andKuwait University.

Al-Malaika taught at a number of schools and universities, most notably at theUniversity of Mosul.

Al-Malaika left Iraq in 1970 with her husbandAbdel Hadi Mahbooba and family, following the rise of theArab Socialist Ba'ath Party of Iraq to power. She lived inKuwait untilSaddam Hussein's invasion in 1990. Al-Malaika and her family left forCairo, where she lived for the rest of her life. Towards the end of her life, al-Malaika suffered from a number of health issues, includingParkinson's disease.^[2]

She died in Cairo in 2007 at the age of 83.^[1]

• "The Nights Lover" (عاشقة الليل), her first book of poetry, after her graduation;
• "The Cholera" (الكوليرا) (1947) is considered by critics as a revolution in modern Arabic poetry;
• "Shrapnel and Ashes" (شظايا ورماد) (1949);
• "Bottom of the Wave" (قرارة الموجة) (1957);
• "Tree of the Moon" (شجرة القمر) (1968);
• "The sea changes its color" ("يغير ألوانه البحر")(1977)^[6]

One of her poems,Medinat al Hub, inspired the Iraqi artist and scholar,Issam al-Said to produce an artwork with the same name.^[7]

One of her poems,New Year, inspired the Lebanese Palestinian artist Jassem el Hindi to produce his performance Laundry of Legends.^[8]

Emily Drumsta translated a selection of Al-Malaika's poems intoEnglish, collected in a book titled Revolt Against The Sun.^[9]

Some of Al-Malaika's poems were translated intoNepali bySuman Pokhrel, and collected along with the works of other poets in an anthology titled Manpareka Kehi Kavita.^{[10][11][12][13]}

• Iraqi art
• List of Iraqi artists
• Amal Al Zahawi
• For Al-Malaika collections of poems, see also theWikipedia entry in Arabic.

• Al-Malaika, Nazik; Drumsta, Emily (29 October 2020).Revolt Under The Sun: The Selected Poetry of Nazik Al-Mala'ika: A Bilingual Reader. Saqi (published 2020).ISBN 978-0863563522.

• (in Arabic)official site
• flash for her at aljazeera
• news at arabicnews

• 1923 births
• 2007 deaths
• University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni
• Iraqi emigrants to Kuwait
• 20th-century Iraqi poets
• Iraqi women writers
• Writers from Baghdad
• Iraqi Shia Muslims
• Academic staff of the University of Baghdad
• Academic staff of the University of Basrah
• Academic staff of Kuwait University
• Iraqi women poets
• Arabic-language women poets
• Arabic-language poets
• 20th-century women writers
• 21st-century Iraqi poets
• Iraqi expatriates in the United States
• Iraqi expatriates in Kuwait
• Iraqi expatriates in Egypt

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• CS1 Nepali-language sources (ne)
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