Suad Al-kuwari

Suad Saeed Al-Kuwari is a Qatari poet and cultural adviser at the Ministry of Culture and Sports. A graduate in Arabic language and literature from Qatar University, she has written both modern Arabic poetry and song lyrics and represented Qatari poetry in capitals and cultural forums across the world.

She is the mother of two daughters and a son, and sustained literary production alongside family and public cultural work.

She spent a quiet childhood in a conservative environment. Reading and study were her principal interests, and early notes amounted to scattered thoughts written across schoolbooks. By the end of her first stage of schooling, the creative impulse had become clearer, sustained by an expanding range of reading.

At university, she specialised in Arabic language and literature and began writing seriously. Participation in student activity and Qatar University’s first cultural gathering developed her talent. She experimented first with short fiction and the literary essay, then moved towards modern poetry and writing outside established metrical systems, a relatively new direction at the time.

The cultural debates of university life culminated in her first poetry collection, ‘Wrinkles’. Its symbolic poems grew from the experiences of that stage, her fascination with the prose poem and the influence of translated poetry. The publication strengthened her belief that new written forms could develop and diversify poetry while coexisting with its established traditions, despite opposition from some readers and writers.

Her career began with two years in Cultural Relations at the Ministry of Education, where she was responsible for Arab cultural relations. The position gave her direct knowledge of festivals, cultural days, events and agreements.

In 2000, she was assigned to the Doha Cultural Festival. The Ministry of Culture brought together people with literary, intellectual and cultural experience, giving her an opportunity to work among those who valued ideas and art.

The transfer from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Culture became a decisive professional change. Work among books and intellectuals revived her writing and helped form a more mature cultural identity. She joined a group of committed creative figures working to make Doha worthy of its role as a capital of culture.

Drawing on her linguistic training and wide reading, she produced a sequence of poetry collections. ‘Wrinkles’ appeared in 1995, followed five years later by ‘It Was Not My Soul’. She also published ‘The Heir to the Desert’, ‘A Search for Age’ and ‘The Door to Entry’. After a three-year interval, ‘Queen of the Mountains’ appeared in 2004, tracing a poetic biography through social questions emerging from political and social change in Qatar and the wider Arab world.

Her work at the Ministry of Culture coincided with a period of intense cultural activity. The 2002 Doha Cultural Festival was particularly important. She also participated in the Al-Khansa Festival in Oman, Gulf Cultural Month in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, and the Al-Bajrawiyah Festival in Sudan in 2002. At the second Doha Cultural Festival in 2003, she appeared as a poet and served as assistant head of the cultural committee with responsibility for seminars and women’s evenings. Other appearances included Spring of Poetry at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Al-Mutanabbi Festival in Switzerland and the Medellín Festival in Colombia, extending her presence beyond the Gulf.

Support accompanied the journey at home and at work. Her husband believed in the creative project from its first step and remained beside her, while officials and intellectuals offered practical advice and guidance in the demands of cultural administration.

The early route was not without resistance. A different poetic form made it difficult to convince some people of her ability, but persistence and talent established her place. The Cultural Salon became one of the most enjoyable and productive experiences of her life, aided by officials who understood the work and facilitated cooperation from others.

The World Poetry Movement later selected her as an ambassador for Arab poetry representing Qatar, among eighteen Arab poets chosen to represent their countries within a movement of 3,500 poets across five continents. Professionally, she rose to Head of Cultural Activity for two years and then supervised the Cultural Salon, which began within the festival, became permanent and continued until 2016.

At the beginning of 2015, she entered lyric writing. The first piece was a love song, and the form immediately opened a new creative path. She wrote nearly forty songs across national and other subjects; the most recent named in the source was ‘Long Live Qatar’, presented at House of Music in 2018. The works were widely successful.

Her writing and thought reflect the experiences accumulated through cultural work and contact with people of different backgrounds. The Cultural Salon, in particular, taught her to listen and to accept difference as a starting point for creativity and coexistence rather than fanaticism or rejection.

She also confronted divisions within cultural circles between traditional, modern, popular and Nabati forms, as though each belonged to a separate world. She repeatedly argued that creativity links them all and that rigid separation can become a barrier between artists, sometimes leading to marginalisation and the refusal to recognise another form.