Khulood Al Mu’alla is a poet from the United Arab Emirates. Born in Umm Al Quwain, she moved to Ras Al Khaimah in her childhood and completed her education there before attending UAE University to gain her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture. She went on to obtain a Master’s degree in Project Management from Reading University in the UK, and a Bachelor’s degree in Arabic Language from Beirut University.
Khulood has to date published four volumes of poetry. Her first, »Here, I Lost the Time« (1997) was written while she was living in the UK. While living in Sharjah she wrote her second, »You, Alone« (1999); her third and fourth, »Ha’ of the Absent« (2003) and »Perhaps Here« (2008), were written while she was living in Abu Dhabi. Her poems are founded on a desire to change the world through Sufism, and are influenced by her scientific outlook. Critics have received her work favourably, saying »when poetry and science come together, the reader finds himself faced with severely summarised and intensified texts. It touches the spirit, takes it up high to beautiful horizons and leaves it in harmony with itself and more capable of discovering the hidden meanings of life and its details.« Her poems are »founded on a desire to challenge the world through a Sufi insight in which she discovers herself, life and the universe« and that Khulood »leaves the soul on the edges of the poem«.
In 2008, Khulood won the Buland Al Haidari Award for Young Arab Poets at the 30th Aseela International Cultural Festival in Morocco, an event that celebrates visionary poets and intellectuals from the Arab World. She was the first poet from the Gulf to win this award. She is now beginning to receive international recognition as well, with a selection of poems from her four books translated into Spanish in 2010 (»Sin Saciarme«) and into Turkish in 2011 (»Acik Aci«). The same collection will be published in Arabic.
Khulood Al Mu’alla currently resides in Sharjah, where she works for a well-known international telecommunications company.
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