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At the National Library, a book exhibition titled “People’s Poet Hokuma Billuri – 100” has been presented to users on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of People’s Poet Hokuma Billuri, a prominent representative of 20th-century Azerbaijani literature and an important figure in South Azerbaijani poetry.

The exhibition features the poet’s poems, narrative poems, translations, collections published in different years, research works about her life and творчity, as well as materials reflecting her rich literary heritage, civic stance, and social activities.

Hokuma Ibrahim gizi Billuri was born on 3 March 1926 in the city of Zanjan in South Azerbaijan. From 1933 to 1943, she studied at the “Azari” Girls’ School and later worked there as a teacher. Between 1947 and 1952, she received higher education at the Faculty of Philology of Baku State University. She later continued her studies at the Baku Higher Party School and, in 1963, at the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow. In 1963, she defended her dissertation on “The Realist-Democratic Literature of Iranian Azerbaijan” and earned the academic degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences.

Hokuma Billuri began her socio-political activity during World War II in South Azerbaijan. As an active participant in the revolutionary events there, she was awarded the “21 Azar” medal. From December 1946, she was forced to live in exile in Northern Azerbaijan. From that time on, she actively engaged in scholarly and literary work and regularly contributed to periodicals.

She wrote her first poems in Persian while in secondary school and later in Azerbaijani. Her Azerbaijani-language poems such as “Worker,” “My Eyes,” and “Dawn Broke,” as well as her articles, were published in 1945 in the newspapers “Azer,” “On the Path of the Motherland,” and in the journal “Azerbaijan.”

Hokuma Billuri is the author of the books “My Dream” (1949), “In the Years of Struggle” (1951), “The Poet’s Legacy” (1957), “Far from You” (1961), “Morning Sun” (1964), “I Wish” (1969), “The Plane Tree Waits for Me” (1975), “Poems” (1980), “If Spring Comes Again” (1984), and others, as well as the narrative poems “Sariya” (“Immortal Hero”), “Your Life,” “Mahin,” and “Under Those Skies.”

In 1984, she was awarded the honorary title of “Honored Art Worker,” and in 1998 she received the title of “People’s Poet of the Republic of Azerbaijan.”