Farra, Omar al- (1949-): Syrian poet. He was born in Palmyra (Arabic Tadmur) and studied in Homs. He started writing poetry at age thirteen. He worked as a school teacher in Homs for 17 years before devoting himself to poetry. Although some of his poems are in formal Arabic, he usually used spoken Arabic with a bedouin dialect. One of his most poems is Hamda; which describes the sufferring of a bedouin girl who was forced by her family to marry her cousin.