Nikita Gill is an Irish-Indian poet, playwright, writer and illustrator based in south England.[1] She has written and curated eight volumes of poetry. Gill uses social media to engage her audience and she has over 780,000 followers on Instagram, one of the most popular poets on the platform.[2][3]

Nikita Gill
Gill in 2020
Born
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Alma materUniversity for the Creative Arts
Years active2016–present

Life

edit

Gill was born in Belfast to Indian parents who had been living in Ireland. She has Irish citizenship and Overseas Citizenship of India. Her father was in the merchant navy. The family moved to New Delhi when Gill was six, and she grew up and was educated there.[4] Gill studied design at university in New Delhi, and she completed a master's degree at the University for the Creative Arts.[3] She worked as a cleaner and a care-giver after her education.[5]

Work

edit

Gill's work was first published when she was 12 years old.[4] Gill has published eight volumes of poetry, including Your Soul Is A River (2016), Wild Embers: Poems of rebellion, fire and beauty (2017), Fierce Fairytales: & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul (2018), Great Goddesses: Life lessons from myths and monsters (2019), Your Heart Is The Sea (2019), The Girl and the Goddess (2020), Where Hope Comes From: Poems of Resilience, Healing, and Light (2021), and These Are the Words: fearless versefind your voice (2022). Her work offers reflections on love, and feminist re-tellings of fairy tales and Greek myths.[6][4] She has been inspired by the works of Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.

She wrote and performed her debut work for the stage, Maidens, Myths, and Monsters.[7] She is an ambassador for National Poetry Day.[4] Gill has appeared on the BBC, contributing to Woman's Hour on Radio Four, Free Thinking on Radio Three, and BBC Asian Network.[8][9][10][11]

Personal life

edit

Gill is openly bisexual.[12]

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ Smallman, Etan (10 August 2022). "Poet Nikita Gill: 'I worry about people getting tattoos of my work. What if I made a typo?'". the Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2024.
  2. ^ McKenna, Meghan (26 June 2018). "Don't Repost Nikita Gill's Poetry Without Crediting Her—Even if You're a Kardashian". FASHION Magazine. Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  3. ^ a b ABPL (18 February 2019). "Instapoets taking the world by storm..." www.asian-voice.com. Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d Sanderson, Caroline (15 September 2017). "Nikita Gill | 'There was so much anger inside me'". The Bookseller. Archived from the original on 19 November 2022. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  5. ^ "TEDxLondonWomen". TED. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  6. ^ Bhatia, Shrishti (11 January 2017). "27 Poems By Nikita Gill That Capture The Whirlwind Of Emotions That Love Is". scoopwhoop.com. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  7. ^ "Maidens, Myths & Monsters". Omnibus Theatre. Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  8. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Poets: Charly Cox and Nikita Gill, Premature babies and crocheted octopuses, Scarlett Curtis, Can poetry be a form of therapy?". BBC. 3 October 2018. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  9. ^ "BBC Asian Network - Mim Shaikh, Nikita Gill". BBC. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  10. ^ "BBC Radio 3 - Free Thinking, The Dark and Political Messages of Kids Fiction". BBC. Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  11. ^ "BBC Radio 3 - Free Thinking, Pioneering women: academics and classics". BBC. Archived from the original on 25 January 2020. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  12. ^ Iftikhar, Asyia (13 June 2023). "Mary Lambert, Nikita Gill and more on the enduring legacy of queer female poets". PinkNews. Archived from the original on 10 July 2023. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
edit