Iman Mersal was born in Mit Adlaw, a small village in the northern Nile delta in Egypt, in 1966. She studied Arabic literature at the University of Masura and moved to Cairo in 1988. In 1998 she obtained her Ph.D. from Cairo University with a dissertation on the role of mystical ideas and notions in modern Arabic poetry. In January 1999 she moved to Edmonton, Canada, where she teaches Arabic at the University of Alberta.
Iman Mersal began to publish her poetry in local poetry magazines while still a high school student. In 1985 she became co-editor of the independent feminist magazine Bint al-Ard (Daughter of the Earth), a job she held until she left Masura in 1988.
In Cairo her poems were published in leading literary magazines, such as Ibda (Creativity) and al-Qahira (Cairo).
Her first book of poetry is a collection of measured verse, entitled Ittisâfât (Characterizations). Despite the book’s enthusiastic reception, she ceased writing poetry for three years.
When she began writing again, her style had changed. She now writes prose poems and avoids the rhetoric and nationalistic themes of traditional poetry. She prefers writing about the events of daily life, the joys and pains, great or small, of life as she experiences it.
Selections from these latter two books have been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Hebrew, and book-length English and French translation projects are to be published soon. Iman Mersal continues to write poetry and is working on her first novel.
[Iman Mersal took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2003. This text was written on that occasion.]
Publications (selection):
Characterizations (1990)
A Dark Passageway is Suitable for Learning to Dance (1995)
Walking As Long As Possible (1997)
