Sania Saleh

Sania Saleh
Born	1935 Masyaf, Hama Governorate, Syria
Died	1985
Title	Poet, writer
Spouse	Mohammad al-Maghut

Sania Saleh (1935–1985; Arabic: سنية صالح) was a Syrian writer and poet, who wrote and published several poetry collections. Some of her poetry has been translated into English by Marilyn Hacker.

Biography

Sania Saleh was born in the city of Masyaf, in the Hama Governorate, Syria. She met the Syrian writer Mohammad al-Maghut in the 1950s at the house of the Syrian poet Adunis in Beirut. In the late 1960s she married Mohammad al-Maghut while she was still a student in the college of literature at the University of Damascus, Syria. They had two daughters together and named them Sham and Salafa.

In 1985, Sania Saleh died at a hospital in Paris after having battled an illness for 10 months.

The Egyptian poet Iman Mersal has lamented that fact Saleh's poetry was not more widely known when Mersal was young:

I grew up thinking that there were no modern Arab female poets for me – until I read Sania Saleh, just three years ago or so. And this makes you wonder: why such poetry was not available to me as a young reader? I think if I′d read her early in my life, it would have been fantastic.

Works

• Tight Time (1964) (original title: al-Zaman al-Dayeq)
• Execution Ink (1970) (original title: Hebr al-Idam)
• Zikr al-Ward (1988)
• Dust (1982) (original title: al-Ghubar)

Poetry translated into English

• "Autumn of Freedom". ArabLit Quarterly. Translated by Marilyn Hacker. Fall 2018. Republished in Marilyn Hacker (2019). Blazons: New and Selected Poems, 2000-2018. Carcanet. pp. 56–59. ISBN 9781784107161.
• "The Deluge". Shenadoah. 70 (2). Translated by Marilyn Hacker. Spring 2021.
• "The War of Memory". Shenadoah. 70 (2). Translated by Marilyn Hacker. Spring 2021.

Awards

• An-Nahar newspaper award for best modern poem (1961)
• Hawaa magazine award for short stories (1964)
• Al Hasnaa magazine award for poetry (1967)