Fatima Al Matar is a poet. Her collection, The Heart and the Subsidiary was published in 2010. She was commissioned to write for The Verb on BBC Radio 3 and her work has been short-listed and highly commended in the Torbay Poetry Competition (2009), The Welsh Poetry Competition (2010) and the Sentinel Poetry Competition (2011).
Arabic is her first language and Fatima honed her poetry skills in English by meeting with a small group of poets once a month a Coventry's Council House. Searching for a larger literary scene, she discovered the vibrant multi-cultural city of Leicester, where she found strong enthusiasm for art and poetry. Inspired by a community of like-minded poets, Fatima performed her poetry in multiple venues and won several poetry slams.
Fatima was born in Kuwait and completed an LLM in Law and PhD in Law (Warwick). She now teaches Economic Law at Kuwait University. During her long postgraduate journey away from home, she had her first and only child, Jori, divorced, and discovered her ability to write poetry. Taken from http://www.transculturalwriting.com/Grassroutes/content/Fatima_Al_Matar.htm