POEM - HYMN OF REBIRTH, POETESS - NIAMAT ELHAMRI - MOROCCO

NIAMAT ELHAMRI - MOROCCO

Niamat Elhamri is a Moroccan writer, poet, and editor. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of Asad Children's Magazine and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Barcelona Literary Magazine. She is also the Secretary-General of the Union of World Writers and a member of several distinguished cultural institutions, including the Farsala Academy of Greece and the University of Moroccan Creators for Culture and Arts.
In 2024, she was selected among the Top 100 Literary and Artistic Figures by the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ruwad News. In 2025, she was awarded First Prize in the International Poetry Competition organized by Cattedra Delle Donne in Italy. She also received the Naji Naaman Literary Prize (24th Harvest Edition) in 2026.
Elhamri has published numerous literary works and contributed to more than thirty international literary anthologies. Her writings have appeared in several international magazines, and her works have been translated into ten languages.

 
HYMN OF REBIRTH
 
From the nebula of absence,
my light broke into bloom;
From the womb of nothingness,
revelations unfolded in my palm.
I am she whose crown was woven by twilight,
who was enthroned upon the kingdom of verses.
I scatter letters like pearls
through the corridors of infinity,
As though my fingers were harbors of light,
and my hand a lantern
seducing every horizon.
 
Once, I was
a captive upon a forgotten shelf,
abandoned to the appetite of oblivion.
I kept company with a spider's thread,
and fed upon the silence
of motionless nights.
Then my blood transformed
into a flood of poetry,
shattering the citadels of slumber within me,
rummaging through the ashes of memory
for the lost features of life.
 
I brushed the dust of years from my garments,
and gathered the scattered fragments of poems
from the ruins of sighs.
I am free.
 
No meter can shackle my wrists,
no chain can break the tide of my metaphors.
 
I am the flowing of dawn
when it melts like wine
upon the lips of words.
My spring has never run dry,
nor has the lamp of heartbeat
ever faded within my chest.
 
I am a flame ascending,
proud and luminous,
above the mirrors of the self.
I am the Phoenix.
From the ashes of my wishes
I rise anew.
 
From my silence
I kindle an inferno
before which
the feathers of longing collapse,
helpless and astonished.
 
When I shake the trunk of my inkwell,
silence awakens in terror,
and stars fall prostrate
beneath the certainty of my steps.
I am the champion steed
upon the field of letters.
 
I am the Lady of the Arabic tongue,
and though all languages may bow elsewhere,
they still bear witness
to the sovereignty of my voice.
 
©®NIAMAT ELHAMRI