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An Iraqi poet, she played a major role in the development of the poetry movement in her country and in the Arab world, in an era when great names such as Nazik Al-Malaika, Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab and Balund Al-Haidari shone in the fifties and sixties of the last century.
Lamia Abbas Amara was born in 1929 in Baghdad, coming from the southern city of Amara. She studied at the Higher Teachers’ House, and studied there with personalities who would later become famous, such as Shaker al-Sayyab, Nazik al-Malaika, Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati and her cousin Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Wahed, and graduated in 1955 with a license in the Arabic language.
Her poetic voice emerged as a different voice, and her poetry was distinguished by its boldness and strong language. And she published a poem for her when she was over 15 years old, and that was in the year 1944 and in a magazine called “Al-Samir”, with the help of the well-known Lebanese poet Elia Abu Madi, who was a friend of her uncle and predicted a brilliant poetic future for her, saying, “If there were such children in Iraq For any poetic renaissance, Iraq accepts.
According to the Iraqi writer Aqil Abbas, “Lami’a made a huge revolution in poetry because she focused on the concept of freedom and was a voice for women.” Her poetry was also characterized by some strong gaiety and personality. She said in her well-known poem “I am Iraqi,” which she improvised when a poet tried to flirt with her at the Al-Mirbad Poetry Festival in the eighties of the last century in Iraq: “Do you smoke? No. Do you drink? No. Do you dance? No. What are you plural of no? She said, I am Iraqi.”
The Iraqi poet also worked in the diplomatic corps, as she held the position of Permanent Representative of Iraq to UNESCO in Paris between 1973 and 1975.
The story of Lamea and Al-Sayyab
Lamia joined the late Iraqi poet Shaker al-Sayyab in the high school of teachers, and this made him fascinated by her and sang a poem regarding her saying, “I reminded you, O Lamia, when it was snow and rain…” He also left many poems talking regarding her, so that many say that the famous poem “Rain” I wrote regarding it.
In an interview with the Iraqi novelist Inaam Kachaji, Lamea said, “It is certain that I loved him – that is, al-Sayyab – and I wrote poetry for him, and I was greatly affected by our friendship, which was nothing more than an innocent, flamboyant and creative relationship. It was a very rich period in Badr’s life, I almost stopped writing poetry throughout the period I knew him, and I was satisfied with the role of the inspirational, the listener, the critic, the companion and the friend. I was the mother and the beloved, so my production was little and his production was abundant. I was happy with his friendship and satisfied. And she left him poems in which she mimics him, such as the poem “Shaherazade”, which she wrote during their “study” stage together.
Lamea has published a number of collections of poetry, including “The Empty Corner” (1960), “The Return of Spring” (1963), “Songs of Ishtar” (1969), “They Call It Love” (1972), and “If the Fortune Teller” (1972). 1980), and “The Last Dimension” (1988). And those collections ranged from an activation poem to free poetry.
She died in 2021 at the age of 92 in San Diego on the west coast of the United States, where she lived the rest of her life following she left Iraq in the 1970s.
