Saniya Salih

(1939-1995)

Saniya Salih was born in town of Misyaf, northern Syria. Her mother died at an early age, an event which left a deep mark on her life and poetry. In most of her poems, the mother figure tends to emerge, indicative of the plight of women in the Arab world (“my body is besieged by raiding ghosts”). Some of her poems appeared in two avant-garde poetry magazines during the sixties and seventies, namely Shi’r and Mawaqif. She died from cancer of the blood in 1995, leaving behind two daughters, many unfinished poems and two poetry collections, Azzaman al-Dhaik [A Time of Oppression] which appeared in 1964 and Hibr al-Idam [Ink of Execution] in 1970. She struggled to free herself from cancer and marriage, suffering internally under the shadow of her husband, the well-known Syrian poet Mohammad al-Maghut (1934-2006).