Saida Chowdhury, 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.

The first time that she had performed spoken word in front of an audience only took place on November 27th, 2024, for Words of Wisdom at Café Royale in Wolverhampton. Since then, she has had the confidence to read more of her work for the Human Rights Celebration Day on 10th December at the University of Wolverhampton, The RICNIC New Year Arts Festival, The Ian Henery Show Black Country Xtra, The Verve Open Mic, The Delves Baptist Church charity fundraiser, Katie Fitzgerald’s, Robertos, Poetry Breakfast and latest The International Women’s Day Celebration at the University of Wolverhampton alongside Sureena Brackenridge MP for Wolverhampton North East who has written the foreword for ‘Broken Minds’.

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

“We are all broken” explains 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.