Saida Chowdhury - Broken Minds

We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have Saida Chowdhury, poet and Human Rights Advocate, joining us here at The Heath Bookshop to talk about her debut poetry book, 'Broken Minds'. She will be accompanied by several people who have helped her on this recent journey of getting her book ready for publication. 

The discussion will take place for around an hour. There will be a book signing afterwards. 

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 book has also had reviews by Manjit Sahota of Poets Against Racism, Junna Begum of Legacy West Midlands and Kuli Kohli Wolverhampton Poet Laureate who has also invited Saida to be part of the South Asian Women Writers Group.

Saida’s writing has led her to be invited to many different festivals across the year and to be promoted by BADA, Bangladeshi Artist Development Agency during Bangla Month in November.

Accompanying Saida will be -

Matty Bobcash of Burdizzo Books, the publishing company, publishing her book. 

Christiane Jenkins BA MA of SUIT (service user involvement team) who has created the artwork for the front cover and will discuss what SUIT do and why she felt compelled to do the artwork. 

Ian Henery, Saida’s Mentor/Manager. Ian has not only created vast networking opportunities for Saida, including allowing her to showcase her poetry on The Ian Henery Show, Black Country Xtra, but has also written a review for the book and will be reading a few of his own poems. 

Diyodi Menon of Creative Connections, who has written a review for Saida and also turned a poem into a short film. He also invited Saida to read at International Human Rights Day and has created an advertising campaign to promote the book.

"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.

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. 

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. 

As always, we look forward to seeing you. 

Catherine & Claire