Born in Nablus early this century, Fadwa Tuqan is the most productive of all Arab women poets. She is called the poet of love and pain, because her poetry deals with themes of personal and national love and loss. Between 1958 and 1970 she published 5 volumes of poetry. Her second volume en- titled “I found it” is considered as her actual mature beginning where she is more forward, more ad- venturous, and more courageous. Critics like Salma Al Khadra Al Jayyusi assert that she was the first Arab woman poet to talk openly about love, pro- claiming that “Fadwa's mounting candor about her emotional life as portrayed in her verse remains an amazing feat of pioneering courage.” Among her collections are I Found it (1958), Closed Door (1967), Horsemen of the Night (1969), and Alone on the Summit of the World (1973). Her work is represented in English translation in several major anthologies including “Modern Arabic Poetry, An Anthology” (Columbia University Press, 1987). A poet all her life, Tuqan's first attempt at writing prose is her autobiography, entitled “Difficult Journey, Mountainous Journey”, her richest contribution to Arab women's literature which was first published in Arabic in 1985 and in English in 1990 by the Women's Press, London. For an Arab woman, regardless of her age, to write an autobiography is not an easy task because of social constraints on the one hand and the constraints of the form itself on the other. However, Tuqan assumes the necessary courage to write about her childhood and adolescence in Nablus, a very conservative city, in the early decades of this century. This autobiography ends with the 1967 war. Later on it is followed by the second part entitled “The most difficult journey” which spans a segment of her life after the Israeli occupation of 1967. Early this year, the film-tribute “Fadwa... The Story of a Poet from Palestine” was screened in Ramallah. Directed by another Palestinian writer, Liana Bader, who also published a book of dialogues with Fadwa, the film is a sensitive portrait of the life and accomplishments of Tuqan. Tuqan still lives in Nablus up to this day.

A Life My life is tears And a fond heart Longing, a book of poetry and a lute My life, my totally sorrowful life If its silhouette should vanish tomorrow, an echo would remain on earth, my voice repeating: My life is tears And a fond heart Longing, a book of poetry and a lute. ... On the sad nights When silence endlessly deepens, The phantoms of my loved ones pass Before me like wisps of dreams, Poking the fire alive beneath the ashes And drenching my pillow with tears, Tears of longing For ones who have died And lie, folded in the darkness of the grave. … Now I bow my head, desolate. A lost horizon thunders inside. Poems alone are my refuge. In them I describe My longings Only then can this soul Find calm.                         Poetry translated by Naomi Shihab Nye in: Fadwa Tuqan, “A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography”, London: The Women's Press Ltd.,1990.