Lamia Abbas

Lamia Abbas Amara (; ), also sometimes spelled Lamea Abbas Amara; 1929 – 18 June 2021) was an Iraqi poet. She was a pioneer of modern Arabic poetry and an important figure in contemporary poetry in Iraq.

Name

Lamia is her given name, while Abbas is her father's name, and Amara is her paternal grandfather's name. Her father was Bayan bar Manu, while her cousin Abdul Razzak Abdul Wahid (1930–2015) was also a poet.

She studied at the Teachers' Training College, which later became part of the Baghdad University, and graduated in 1950.

Career Abbas began writing poetry at age twelve, and published her first poem at age 14 in Al-Samir, a New York-based magazine founded by poet Elia Abu Madi.

She was a member of the administrative board of the Iraqi Writers Union in Baghdad between 1963 and 1975, a member of the administrative board of the Syriac Synod in Baghdad, and deputy permanent representative of Iraq to UNESCO in Paris between 1973 and 1975, and director of culture and arts at the University of Technology in Baghdad.

Personal life and death Lamia Abbas owned several Mandaean manuscripts that were given to her by her maternal uncle, Dakhil Aidan. These manuscripts, including the Ginza Rabba (two copies dating to 1886 and 1935), Mandaean Book of John (from 1922), and Book of the Zodiac (from 1919), were studied by Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley. She kept the manuscripts inside white cotton cloth bags containing musk grains, considered to be the scent of Life by Mandaeans.

Abbas died in the United States on 18 June 2021, aged 92.

Works

Collections Source

The Empty Corner (1960) The Return of Spring (1963) The Songs of Ishtar (1969) They Call It Love (1972) If the Wizard Prophecies (alternatively titled If the Fortune-Teller Had Told Me, 1980) The Last Dimension (1988) Iraqiya (1990)