A local poet and human rights advocate has gone from performing her first ever spoken word in front of an audience on November 27th, 2024, for Words of Wisdom at Café Royale in Wolverhampton to performing at her first ever Arts Festival and run her first poetry workshop in a matter of six weeks! On Saturday 11th January 2025 in Walsall,  a New Years Arts Festival was hosted by RicniC in collaboration with Walsall Council, who empower young people through the creative arts.

‘What an amazing event for the community at such a beautiful venue, (St Paul’s Church, Walsall), with creative activities and delicious food, all for free! My favourite was, the Victoria Sponge cake! Performing alongside Ian Henery, Lee Benson, Laura Liptrot and Ryan Kenny. It has been a great experience meeting these incredible people who have given me invaluable advice and who have inspired me to further my career in the world of poetry and spoken word. The event also left me feeling so rewarded when I saw the sense of achievement and pride that the young people felt from writing their own pieces of poetry at my workshop, young people who initially claimed that they could not write poetry’.

Saida Chowdhury (pictured), who studied at Queen Mary, University of London, has been writing poetry for over 20 years.  Her debut collection, ‘Broken Minds’, will be published this year and will be accompanied with poetry workshops across Birmingham on the theme of mental health.  

Saida was born in Bangladesh and came to the UK as a baby before growing up in West London.  She moved to Birmingham over 18 years ago after getting married and is the mother of 2 teenage boys.    

Gaining in confidence since her first ever reading on 27th November, has led to the reading of more of her work for the Human Rights Celebration Day on 10th December at the University of Wolverhampton, and All You Need Is Love And A Microphone at Café Royale where her words moved some of the audience to tears.

Her impact both professionally and personally has led her to be invited to be part of South Asian Women Poets Group with Kuli Kohli, Wolverhampton Poet Laureate, and other distinguished female Asian Poets, such as Priyanka Joshi and Santosh Dary, “Wow! What an honour to be invited by Kuli Kohli to be part of this inspirational group of ladies!”, Saida exclaimed.

Her debut poetry book, ‘Broken Minds’ explores various themes, but they are all entwined and understood by her personal understanding of the Japanese art form of ‘Kintsugi’.

"We are all broken" explained Saida "and there is a Japanese word, Kintsugi which means "Golden Joinery".  It`s a traditional Japanese art of mending broken pottery and ceramics using either precious metal liquids or lacquer with gold dusting.  Kintsugi beautifies the breakage and treats it as an inspirational part of the object`s history and the broken pot not as something to discard but as something more precious than it was before".  

Saida’s intention is to apply this philosophy to human trauma and scars both physical, mental and emotional.

Her message to people is “Your scars are not ugly, they are beautiful parts of you and your history that need to be embraced in order to heal, help and grow. 

Saida is excited to announce that The Heath Bookshop in Kings Heath, will be holding a book launch for her debut book, ‘Broken Minds’, later this year, “So watch this space!”.

Her presence and work at the New Years Art Festival by RicNic, has created many exciting opportunities some which may involve further collaboration with RicNic themselves, “So thankful to Jennifer Holyhead for inviting myself and Ian Henery from The Ian Henery Show, Black Country Xtra Radio, and now wanting to work with us again in the future on a very exciting project indeed!”.

Other opportunities which have arisen are an invitation to perform at Robertos in Halesowen with Lee Benson from Black Country Radio, and also an invitation to be on Listen with Lee Show. She will also be performing at Katie Fitzgerald’s, in Stourbridge, in February with Laura Liprot, a published poet, author, playwright and actress.

“I am completely blown away, not only did I get to listen to these amazing poets perform, they have now invited me to their own events. Wow just Wow!” Saida professed excitedly.

Her book launches across the region will be accompanied by a series of online films of Saida reading her work courtesy of Steve Hughes, of Hughes Media. “I am so grateful for all of Steve’s creative, explorative ideas and look forward to working with him”.

She began using poetry over 20 years ago after witnessing the injustices of the aftermath of 9/11 and trying to understand the root causes of the injustices that exist in the world.  She hopes now that through poetry, she can help heal minds and bridge gaps in our society.