How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Nikita Gill - Everyone Wants to Be Heard But No One Wants to Listen

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Before becoming a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author, and one of the most widely read poets on Instagram, Nikita worked as a cleaner and carer while sharing her poetry online. She moved from New Delhi to Britain in her early twenties to study for a master's degree at the University for the Creative Arts, and felt she ‘disappointed’ her parents and faced repeated rejection and misogyny in the process. In this episode, she tells Elizabeth about her unusual childhood at sea, growing up in places marked by contested borders, where bomb scares at school felt routine, and the many obstacles she faced throughout her career. She also reflects on the power of poetry to connect us, why myths still resonate today and how writing became both a form of resistance and survival. IN THIS EPISODE: 00:00 Introduction 03:10 Archivist Heart 04:33 Unheard Voices 07:10 Borders Bomb Scares 09:49 Childhood 11:30 Mythical Power 13:52 Rejection To Breakthrough 25:51 Success Highs and Lows 26:31 Rejection as Return 27:45 Dating and Being Returned 28:11 BuzzFeed Fame Backlash 33:36 Shame and Misogyny Online 34:51 Surviving Internet Pile Ons 39:16 Chronic Pain Finally Named 48:34 Family Grief and Goodbye LINKS + MENTIONS: Nikita’s new book, Styx: The River is out this Autumn: www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Styx-The-River/Nikita-Gill/9781398537194 Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com WANT MORE? Michael Rosen - swap.fm/l/TCjvDZaxrZsq4iZRCccm LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Guest bookings for How To Fail only come from official @sonymusic.com emails Elizabeth and Nikita answer listener questions in our subscriber series: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're living in a very interesting time where everyone wants to be heard but no one wants to listen. Bombscares are not normal. They're not supposed to be, that's not supposed to be a reason you get a day off school. And it's so interesting to go from a student to a cleaner because suddenly you become invisible. It's when someone said the only reason. It's not because of her words. It's because of what she looks like. That got under my skin.

This episode of How to Fail is brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. this is the podcast that believes failure is simply part of the journey. It is never just the destination. And if we learn from it, we can find our way to eventual success. Before we get started on this particular conversation, please do you remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode.

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Oikos Pro Feed your strength. Visit oikos.ca for more details. Nikita Gill is a poet, playwright and artist. She was born in Belfast where her father worked for the Merchant Navy, later moving to New Delhi when she was six. Growing up in places with contested borders and traumatic histories with colonial oppression were formative experiences for the young Gill's creativity. Age 12, she had her first poem published in local newspapers. It was inspired by her grandfather's experiences of partition and Gill was encouraged to submit it for publication by, as she puts it, the scariest teacher in my school.

She later returned to Britain in her early 20s for a master's degree at the University of Creative Arts, working for a number of years as a carer and cleaner before starting to publish her poems online. Since then, she has become one of the most followed poets on Instagram. Her work is infused with nature, myth and female rage, and its admirers include Alanis Morissette, Sam Smith and Chloe Kardashian. Gill has gone on to write several volumes of poetry and a novel in verse, which is currently being adapted for TV. She is also a number one New York Times bestseller, and the second installment of her mythological fantasy trilogy, Sticks, The River, is out this autumn. If you've read

a Nikita Gil poem, or if, like me, you've been lucky enough to watch her perform one, you will no doubt be struck by its lyrical resonance to the human condition. The job of the writer, Gill says, and the job of the artist is to be archivists of the human heart. Nikita Gill, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much for having me, Elizabeth. I am so excited to be here. I'm so excited to have you here. I often end my introductions on a quotation from a guest. There were so many quotes that I could have picked from you because your words send shivers down my spine in the best possible way. Thank you.

And I alighted on the one about being an archivist of the human heart because I really do think that that's such a potent thing to say. What have you learned about the human heart in your years of archiving it? I think we have such a rich history of emotion and of the way that we understand it. And I think the job of the artist and the job of the writer is to deepen our understanding of not just ourselves, but the world around us. And I always say that poets are very much the emotive historians of humankind. And I say that because history has a habit of being so clinical. all, history will do this thing, which is, you know, it'll go in numbers, one million people,

for instance, in partition, or displaced. It becomes, we become numbers, but the poet's job is to look at one family in that one million that was displaced, maybe find the littlest person in that family, the child, and then tell the story of the family through the child's eyes. For me, there are so many lessons I've learned, But the biggest one is you have to take what you do seriously when you're a writer because your job is enormous. You help people understand themselves better. When asked where you get your inspiration for your work from, you said that you can find it anywhere. And you said this unbelievably beautiful thing.

Even an empty bottle of water tells the story of the person who drank it and left it there. How much do you think your work? is also the archiving of absence, the silent voices, the unheard, the overlooked. I think all of it, right? I realized very young that there were two versions of the people that I knew at that time. Now I know there's multitudes in every human being. But when I was about six or five, I realized that there were multiple versions of my parents, for instance, who they were in front of their parents

and who they were in front of us were two entirely different people sometimes and because I learned that quite young, I also learned how to assess moods and I learned how to see underneath and the subtext with my classmates, for instance. I knew when I was about seven that there were children who would come in very quiet

and then suddenly as the day went on they would open up. And I knew there were some kids who just wouldn't open up. And I knew that there were some kids who would get quieter as the day went on because they were going to head home and there. And I knew quite early that what that meant, it meant that some children came from abusive homes. And those were the people that I felt drawn to. Those were the people that I realized needed to be heard. And it doesn't really take much. You just sit with someone and they'll tell you if they feel like you don't mean them harm, you'll just listen. We're living in a very interesting time where everyone wants to be heard but no one wants to

listen. Listening was very important to me. I wonder how much of that comes from the places that you grew up in. So you and I, we're discovering, have a lot in common. And one of the things that we have in common is you were born in Belfast. I spent my childhood in the north of Ireland. Wow. So I was born in England, but we moved. to Derry when I was four years old. And that experience was incredibly formative for me,

as I'm sure it was for you and then the move back to New Delhi. But I feel there was so much in that particular province where the most important stories were not the one spoken about because to speak them was sometimes to put you in danger or to show who you were. And there was a fear associated with that. Could you talk to us a little bit about the idea of sort of borders and identity and partition and how aware you were of that growing up? So I actually went to Kashmir before Delhi. Okay. So which is very interesting because both Belfast and Kashmir have a legacy of partition. They both have a religious conflict which deeply affects them. There is, and it's completely different from each other in regards to the

kind of religious conflict, but it's there nonetheless. What does it do to the lexicon of a child? To understand what militarized presence is. To understand what a curfew is. To understand what a bomb scare is. And Kashmir had the same issue. There was this constant presence of threat. Balfast had this constant presence of threat. It was like walking a tightrope. Any second violence could erupt. And you've become so aware of that when you're a child. And when you do, you can't help but become empathetic because you have to be so aware of your surroundings every room you're in, the moods your parents are in. What did the newsman say today? I remember thinking that, what did the newsman say today? And what does that mean for us as a family? You know, when we

moved to Delhi, Delhi schools when I was a teenager quite often used to get a bomb scare called in. So I went to the British school in New Delhi. And I think at least about six or seven times over the of those four years, there was a bombscare called in. Now, it could have been just a kid pranking, so we all got to go home early. It's nice to think of it that way. It's a lot more innocent, but what if there was? It was an embassy school.

You know, the American and the British embassy schools were next door to each other, so there was this threat. And it's so, it was so normalized for me. It's only when I came here 15 years ago and I talked to people and I heard the experiences that I realized, actually, my childhood was quite unusual in some ways. And bomb scares are not normal. They're not supposed to be, that's not supposed to be a reason you get a day off school.

And it just made me care so much about refugees. And it made me, especially children, child asylum seekers, it made me care so much because I realized that everything that I went through was not even slightly, even a little bit of what they go through. Oh, God, you're just so good with words. I don't know. You've expressed that. so perfectly. And you've expressed also the depth in which your personal experience is political.

Oh yeah. There is no separation between the two. No. Another thing that I know was formative for you was the sea because of your father's job in the Merchant Navy. Tell me a bit about your experiences of the sea. Oh, beautiful. I loved that my parents gave me this unusual. upbringing of taking me out to my mom who is, I sometimes think she could be a lawyer, she could talk anyone and do anything, but she was able to convince the school that I was enrolled in when I was really young, so nursery onwards, that she would like to take me away for 10 months of the year and then just bring me back for a few months to do my exams, like final exams. And they were like, how are you going to do that?

or she's a qualified teacher. So she taught me on the ship. So my childhood was entirely out at sea. And I will never forget this. My father, bless him, is a man with a big tender heart. And because he's a man with this beautiful big tender heart, he felt really bad that his daughter didn't have a playground. All other children have a playground.

He just got in his head. He's like, my daughter doesn't have a playground. It's just ship everywhere. Like she has nowhere that she can run around. He built me a swing out on the deck. And I can't even take. tell you this, Elizabeth, what it felt like because it is such an enormous experience. I remember sitting on that swing and it was high up, like it was right outside his cabin. So I would swing

and it felt like I was flying over the water. I felt like I was a bird. I really did. It was, is such a freeing, liberating experience. I must have been about nine, no eight, something like that. My name is Yo-A-Shah. I used to host a human behavior show called invisibilia, which means I spent years trying to understand why people do what they do. It turns out the answer is often, inconveniently, feelings, especially the ones we don't know what to do with. On my new show proxy, listeners bring me their emotional conundrums, the cases they haven't been able to close, maybe because no one in their life can relate, or maybe because the one person they wish they could talk to won't or can't.

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Stick, so the latest installment of your mythological trilogy is out in autumn. It's not the first time that you have been doing. drawn to myth. What is it about these ancient stories that keeps capturing your imagination? It's quite interesting to me because the Titans and the Olympians basically had this 10,000 year-long war. And the Titans fascinated me because I always joke about this. The Titans get an incredibly bad rap. Like the Olympians have excellent VR. Everyone knows who they are. They've got the same PR firm as dogs do. When I was a very PR firm as dogs do. When I was reading about these goddesses, I was like, oh, so there's all of these fascinating figures in the

underworld. And the underworld, it's treated as its own separate realm. And as I began reading about the underworld and I started reading about Tartarus, which is the immortal prison, but is also a god, a primordial god. So a place and a god at once is so interesting, just that figure by himself. Nix, who's the goddess of the night, is the knight and the personification of the night. And then you have sticks who is the river of the dead. So everyone who dies, according to the Greeks, has to travel that river into the underworld. So she's the mouth of the underworld. And she's the river that the gods swear their oaths by. So if a god breaks an oath, he has to drink her acrid waters and is essentially he or she is exiled then from the council of the gods because

they've broken a boon. Which is why when all the Greek gods make boons, they can't take them back. goes wrong. And I thought, wow, a goddess with that much power. What led to that? Because she's born a nymph. She's born the oldest of the oceanids, which is 3,000 sisters and 3,000 brothers were the Potomoi, the river gods. And I was like, how do you, as the oldest daughter of 6,000 children, how do you make a mark in this world for yourself that is that prominent? They're the goddesses of darker things, stranger things, like odd things. And yeah, that's fascinating. I can understand why you are drawn to these stories because you too are a goddess of darker things in so many ways. Let's get into your failures. And we were chatting before we started recording because you are

one of those phenomenally generous women and it is normally women who has offered me more than three failures. So I've had my pick. Your first failure is, as you put it, the seven years of rejections on my journey to trying to get published. All whilst I was working as a cleaner and a carer after coming to the UK, after a disastrous relationship changing fight with my parents, because I was determined to be a writer. Yes. There's a lot in there, Nikita.

Yeah, yeah. Let's start with coming to the UK and that fight with your parents. What ambitions did they have for you? So my parents wanted me to get a good, nine to five stable paying job and get married. They're very keen that those were the two things that I did. And I think like I must have been about 19 when they first started, you know, looking at maybe boys for me.

In India we still have, you know, our parents are so involved in that. And, you know, my parents are quite progressive in so many ways because they were like, you know, they would never pressure me in that space. But they were very much traditional in the fact that this is what you're supposed to do. We've educated you. You've done really well with your education. Get a good stable job. It was still something like graphic design in their heads.

They were like, we're not pressuring you to be a doctor or a lawyer and engineer. You can still work in the arts. Just make sure that it's sensible. Anything. You know, they want you to be financially stable. My mom was very keen. You must have your own money and you should not rely on your husband. I think maybe I did break their hearts a little bit when I said,

I don't think this life is for me. I don't think I could do it. I don't think I can get married young because I don't think I've seen enough of the world yet. Something in me told me quite firmly that if I do not follow my passion of being a writer, not only am I depriving my spirit, I will end up harming who I am as a human being as a person.

If I don't follow this, there's a calling which is so loud that it echoes in my head every morning. when I wake up and every night that I go to sleep. And so I told them and I tried to explain this to them. And, you know, I think it's such a big thing for an Indian girl to suddenly ask her parents, I want to go to the UK. I will start from scratch.

You don't have to help me. I will do this all by myself. And they were so upset. They really were. We fought. It's probably the worst fight we ever had as a family like my parents and me. And it was an ongoing fight. it wasn't just over in one day,

it was two days, three days, four days, ten days. Finally, I did come back. And it took a long time to fix that relationship. It did. And work from all of us collectively to fix it. I'm very lucky I have parents who did want to do the work because it would have been so easy for them to go, you know, when I came here and I did start from scratch.

I started at, you know, I was cleaning the same university like on occasion that I studied at and it's so interesting to go from a student to a cleaner because suddenly you become invisible. You become invisible to the same people who taught you teachers, you become invisible to students who knew you because you are no longer in the same social strata, you're now below them in their eyes.

And that taught me so much about class and the way that it works in this country. But also, when I worked as a carer, I was working with these incredible young people. I was working with young people with disabilities. And they were just the most incredible, funny, kind people that I had ever worked. I felt incredibly privileged and very lucky to work with them because of the group of young people that they were. And I started writing my poetry and putting it online because, they basically went, Auntie, you can't just write your little poetry's in your book and read them to us. You've got to start putting them somewhere. So I started putting them online because I just, you know, I tried sending them to various literary journals. No one wanted them. They were too, what was it? The word that was used for the first time and not a polite way, these are too accessible.

So funny that that's seen as a criticism, isn't it? surely that's what all art should be. Yeah, accessible. It should be for everyone. And that, it really stuck with me that first rejection that I got that said, you know, this feels a little bit too accessible. And to be fair to them, I'm guessing what they meant was obviously every literary journal does it differently.

So maybe they were looking for, but it's the specific word they used accessibility like it was a negative that really framed the way that I saw my work in a positive way. because I'm like, what kind of poet do I want to be? Do I want to be a poet that's read by 10 people because I've made my work that way? Or do I want my work to be able to read someone and say, you're not alone and give them a hug? Yes.

And so it was a very conscious choice to become that person. And so every rejection I got kind of fueled me towards the woman that I was going to be. But it was so hard, Elizabeth. What was the first poem that you? you took a chance on and published online. It was Tumblr then, wasn't it? Yes. Can you remember the first one?

I can't for the life of me remember the exact first one, but I remember the one that started doing well. It was Perspectives. And it's just a very short poem. And it's about, you know, I think I wrote it literally after a rejection. Like, you know, some, it was basically about like being able to see the world and not some people are born with this idea that like you know everything is is terrible and some people are born with this idea that everything can be made good and I would rather be the second person no matter how hard it gets and so perspectives was like just literally about a shift in perspective you know that moment where you sometimes you log on and something's gone viral and we've got used to that now but back then I had no concept of what virality was I woke up one day and I was like have I logged in to someone else's account.

What is happening? Like, I was like, have I broken the internet? What is happening? Have I broken Tumblr? Like, and then I logged out and I did it about three times. And I was like, no, this is definitely my accounts. The lead singer of Fallout Boy had shared it. And I just was like, oh, when you're getting all those rejections and then after six years

you experience being read, it's so discombobulating, so powerful, so amazing, but also really discombobulating because you've repeatedly been told that you can't do this, that you're failing at this. And then suddenly after years there's a success. What do you do with that? Well, come on to that in a minute. I'm so interested in how you dealt with those six, seven years of rejection. Because on the one hand, you have this soul instinct that you must write. And you've risked everything for it and you've risked the relationship with your family for it. And so here you are doing it. And on the other, you have these snobbish literary gatekeepers saying, you're too accessible. This is not for us. What did you learn about how to manage rejection in

that time? Do you know, the hardest thing that I would say when you have consistent failures is keeping going and finding things to nourish you through consistently being made different. feel that you are not good enough. And not even a question of you're not good enough. You're bad at this. Give up. You're bad at this because that's what a rejection really feels like. And I think for me, I was, I made, I'm outgoing as a person, so I was able to make friends. You know, I had this, like, community of young people who were so encouraging around me, but, like, it was so enormously hard. I remember thinking, God, because you question everything. So you start questioning, I'm like, did I make a mistake leaving India and saying this is my calling and I have to be here and do this?

Were my parents right? The most troubling question of all was my, were my parents right? And have I made a tremendous error? And you like there was I think a whole year where I went to sleep every night thinking this. You know, and keeping on going through that was literally day by day. Get up every morning, have this routine, go to school, come back. write anyway. Write for yourself because no one else is reading.

And the void teaches you so much as a writer. Because no one is looking at it, you're doing it only for you. Which is why now when I talk to young people about writing, I'm like, enjoy the void. Enjoy it. Because once you get into deadlines, there's someone waiting for it always at the other end, whereas no one is waiting for it, which means you can do anything. Yes. Yeah.

How does success feel now having experienced that rejection? Would you, do you feel successful? Slightly strange question. I love that you ask me that because when Hikati hit the number one on the New York Times best seller list. Incredible achievement, can I just say. Thank you so much. People don't know how hard that is. If you are not American, it is so hard.

To hit the number one spot, the New York Times best seller, let's just give you your, your laurels for that moment. Well done. Thank you so much. I think it was such a surreal experience because I was in a cab heading back after having dinner with a lovely friend and my editor emails me because obviously different time zones and she was like, I didn't think I was going to hit the list at all. And then she emails me and she goes, my God, you're number one. And I was like, no, stop joking with me, no way Margaret sort of thing. That's what I thought. But no, she sent me the the clipping and it was after so many years and even like in publishing it

I was 10 years into publishing by then like this is my what it would have been my 10th book after so many years and this whole idea like it really challenges this whole notion that there's an overnight success you get one shot at it you write your debut if the debut doesn't do it

that's it for you don't buy that ever I did it on my 10th book I mean there are people who do it on like their 20th book or their 30th book. And I think that moment, it was so surreal. And I cried. I cried on the train back home.

The lovely, I was in an Uber. And the lovely Uber man was like an beautiful older gentleman. And I said, I'm sorry, it's just happened. I have no one to tell this to. Can I just tell you? And he just looks at me and he goes, what is it? Are you okay? Because he obviously thought something's wrong with his car.

I was like, no, no. I've hit number one on the New York Times best cellulist. He stops the car and he looks back at me. He says, I'm so proud of you, Beta. And of course, I was in floods of tears then because this lovely man who I don't even know has turned around and said that to me. When I called my mom and dad,

then it really felt like that moment, you know, where I remembered every fight we had about this. And my mom is like, you know, when they said they were so proud of me, I think it came right from their soul. Yes. And it meant so much. And I think it took a long time to get there.

But the longer it takes to get there, the longer the journey, the more incredible the moment. Because you have had so long to wait for it that when it finally arrives, you're able to welcome it with flowers and joy and love and so much. And that's what that did to me. And it's interesting because navigating that success also comes with, and you know this, like you'll have this high one day. And the next day in publishing, you'll have the lowest of laws. Like someone has written a terrible review about this book, which has hit this New York Times bestseller. But it may have had like a terrible review. I heard this thing that you said about rejection and you were quoting another writer, kind of mentor of yours.

Yes. That having things rejected is like having them return to you. Yes. Which I loved. Tell us a little bit about that because I think anyone listening or watching this who is under good, going a period of rejection for whatever reason, whether it be professional personal, we'll get so much from hearing this. So the incredible poet, Dean Atter, who I'm very fortunate to call friend, Dean just won

a BAFTA for his short film, Two Black Boys in Paradise. He's a wonderful person to talk to when it comes to things like this, because he consistently talks about, you know, the way that you fail as a writer and why it means more. And so he talked about how he never sees, at least now, never sees something rejected as rejected. He says it's returned, which means it has another home, or you have to work on it more, or maybe the idea needs to have a different genesis, like it needs to go elsewhere. And that's just not the right place for it. And I thought that was such a beautiful way to look at the concept of rejection. It's so good and so profound. And I even think that's even.

think you can apply it to something like dating. I mean, I went through so much rejection when I was online dating through the apps in my late 30s. And actually, that idea of you've been returned to yourself because this person or this relationship was not the right fit for the precious cargo that you carry. Exactly. It's such a helpful way of seeing it. Oh, so true. So true. Yeah. Let's get back to your failures because your second failure is a fallout from a BuzzFeed. article that made you go viral. Now, I don't know, I think this might be a nice thing to hear because I had no idea about this particular article or what happened. I have only ever known you as this spectacular poet, playwright, artist, novelist. So tell us about this article and when it

appeared and what happened. So I think I had just got onto Instagram. And the reason I got onto Instagram was because I realized that my work was being shared on there and there was no way for me to people were like cutting the credit out and stuff, which it's an odd thing to do. Like, don't you want to know where the words came from? Because I think with poetry, it is important to know the genesis of words

because I believe that art is political and therefore the body that creates it, it comes from anywhere. Yes, and let's not erase the voice of the person. I mean, that's not, yes, the whole point. So I literally joined Instagram. because I thought I was going to start putting work out there. And so I must have been on there for about two months, three months, maybe, or maybe a year.

It was quite a short time that I'd really been starting posting my work. And BuzzFeed wrote this article about me out of the blue. And they said, like, you know, today in Brown feminist awesomeness, there's this poet. And they were doing lots of that. They were sharing artists at the time. They were doing lots of great work. and I gained 20,000 followers overnight out of it. I went from essentially maybe like 5,000 followers to 25,000 overnight,

which is an enormous rise. But I also became Twitter's main character for my bad poetry. And, you know, as someone who already has all of those years of rejections behind me, and so has already got that like imposter syndrome of questioning myself and self-doubt and watching people pillory, take my work out of context because they all excerpts and pillory my work and say, she shite at this. I can't believe someone who is 28 wrote this. Why is she being allowed to do this? Like, I don't think people like this should be allowed to write poetry. And I remember this

was the most disconcerting experience. At the time I was still sharing photos of myself because the feed was, it was my Instagram, only 5,000 people on there. So I was sharing like, of myself every now and then. And someone shared a photo of me, and they basically said, people aren't following her for the poetry. They're following her because she looks like this. And it was like,

it was a photo of me that I had put up, that I was at the beach in a bikini at the time. And I remember what that did to my brain because I was like, oh, they're going to think that like, the only reason people want to follow me is because I look a certain, way. And I didn't share a photo of myself on my feed for eight or nine years after that. It's only in the

last two or three years where I suddenly I've become comfortable with it again, really. But it really, it's so strange the way we perceive ourselves because all of this other stuff people were saying about my work. It's not that I haven't already thought it myself. Right. So none of it was new. it hurt. It was the first time I've been part of a pile on for writing poetry which is a weird thing to be piled on for. They won't even like upset about the content of the poems

because it was all about trauma and pain. There were some people who were saying that she's never experienced trauma or pain which was painful but they weren't upset about the content. They were upset that I was writing about it and that the way I was writing about it. I can work with that.

it's when someone said the only reason it's not because of her words is because of what she looks like that got under my skin deeply and I didn't post for a few days because for me I saw becoming the main character of Twitter

was a massive failure a failure on my own part I was like I should have done better sharing my work I should have posted the whole poem somehow I should have left links maybe this wouldn't have happened to me then of course

the internet was still a new animal to me at the time I didn't realize, and now we do know a lot better once the internet has you in its headlights, it's like blood in the water. They're like sharks. There is nothing you could have done once someone had decided that you were enemy number one of the day for writing poetry. It doesn't matter. I wrote to the wonderful woman who wrote the article who was another brown girl.

And I said, like, how do I navigate this? I don't want you to pull down the article. I think you've done so well by me. I really thank you. And she said, you know, this happens to people. Like, there are so many, and I think she told me a few people's names that it had happened to. And I went and looked up their work and their work was beautiful. And I was like, oh, this is just a subjective and it'll blow over.

It'll be fine. And I've gained so much out of it. Like, I know I'm only focusing on the failures of like being the main character and all these people saying terrible things. But I've gained so much out of it. Yes. You know? I did carry that, though. Nine years of not posting myself.

That sounds to me like shame. Did you feel shame? Massively. I felt shame because I thought if I hadn't shared these like bikini photos and these like photos of myself, like maybe maybe I called it upon myself by doing that. Like you know, that that notion of you asked for it. Our relationship with like the digital word and misogyny has changed a lot. But at the time, the internet felt a lot more democratic.

So any criticism that you got didn't feel immediately like misogyny because a lot of it was coming from women. And at the time I didn't think that women could be that deeply misogynistic that they could do something like that. I've learned since. Like if it had been a man who had said it, I think I would have rationalized it away somehow. But a woman had said it.

And I was like, she must have seen something that I've done wrong. women still elicit so much ire online women of colour then there's a whole other gradient of violence directed towards them how do you cope with that now because you must still experience it absolutely so one thing i've learned about the internet and i want everyone to hear this very clearly because I think it'll happen to everyone at some point or the other. You will make a mistake. You will say something or do something and it will be fully in error. You will have a legacy of not saying or doing those things. You will make a mistake and the internet will come down hard on you. And what they want you to do is double down because the internet wants to create clout out of you.

If you double down, they get like days, weeks of memes, of bullying you, of just, you know, constantly yelling at you. You become like their target. If you apologize, the internet resents you even more because you're shutting that down. So you should apologize because you're taking your personhood back. And also, it is the right thing to do if you've messed up, you apologize. But just remember, because you're apologizing, there are going to be people on there who are going to try and push you because they are looking for a reason to continue to hate you

so that they can continue to use you for cloud. They'll say your apology isn't sincere enough. You can repost your apology. They'll say be specific about the harm you caused. You'll be specific. Unblock all of the people that were abusing you. You can do that. They are looking to see where there is a line that you finally exercise a boundary

and go, okay, now you're. are asking for too much, I've done everything you can, I can. And then they have a reason to hate you all over again and create, turn you into the main character. That is the psychology of the internet. The smartest thing you can do and the kindest thing you can do and the most accountable thing you can do is put up an apology and try and make amends as far as you can and then walk away. Don't carry on over there. Let people say whatever they want about you. had a very disconcerting experience as someone who's square and brown because they were looking for a reason to hate me. Suddenly they were like, she's straight and white. She's definitely, so this

rumor started that I was straight white. And it was wild the way that they just ran with it. But also, the thing that bothered me in that situation was, why did you have to erase my identities? why did you do that? That is an insane thing to do and try to find identities that you felt more comfortable attacking. Why do you feel so comfortable attacking people that you're actively looking to take

to practice erasure? So this is what I always say to people. Apologize because it's the right thing to do and the accountable thing to do. And then make amends and walk away. With your specific example, though, there was nothing to apologize for. So presumably you didn't apologize for continuing to write your poetry. I've made mistakes.

I've been on the internet for 15 years. Like sometimes I've failed in language. Sometimes I'm not communicated an idea properly. I have apologized. You said at the top of this failure that although it was deeply challenging and difficult to go through, it ended up giving you so much. What did it give you? Other than this wisdom.

Okay, it gave you community. So it was 20,000 people who followed me. That community that I gained out of that, there was so many young women, so many older women. And, you know, there were women in their 60s that followed me. And they, this community of women grew around me. Amazing women. Women were doing incredible things. Were nurses and doctors.

Some of them were therapists and they were like, we're using your work to talk to our patients. Like the work just began to go out into these communities. of women. They were people who used them as mindfulness exercises the poems, like they felt seen. And it was all women. And they uplifted me so much. And they gave me

so much in those moments. And I was like, I'm so lucky that BuzzFeed article was written because I would not have met so many incredible women. Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy

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Wayfair, every style, every home. We finally got her. Oh, my God, he got her. For years, a deranged man in Wichita, known as the poet, stalked Ruth Finley. He sent her letters, gifts, and poems. The Wichita police put everything they had into Ruth's case, but got nowhere. The poet was always two steps in front of us, and we just didn't know why. And the city was already living in fear under the watch of another monster who called himself BTK.

And he also had a thing for poetry. Could we really have two different people? But no one could have guessed how this would end. That's one of those Hitchcock endings that we did not expect. From Sony Music Entertainment and New Metric Media, this is the poet. I'm Rachel Brown. The poet is available now on The Binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcast to start listening today.

Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, add free. Talking of womanhood and the great gifts that it gives us, but also the erasure that happens when we try to talk about things that we experience brings us onto your final failure, which is, as you put it, years of gas-sighting myself about my body and pretending I was absolutely fine because everyone else said so. Talk to us about this because you did actually make a health discovery. Yes. But for many years you were living with chronic pain. Yes. Yes. So I had two separate issues where I came up against a wall for decades.

The first one was my scoliosis. So I have a curve in my spine, which in the winters was brutal. Like I felt like I was, you know, 95 years old and I could not get out of bed because the pain was so bad. And so many doctors kept telling me it was my posture. You're just sitting like this and that's why there's pain all the way down your back. Until finally I went to a doctor and they did like a scan. And it's not, it wasn't very visible then. It's more visible now.

But they were like, oh my God, you've got a curve in your spine. Like there's a name for that. It's called scoliosis. and just something that has caused you, pain being named. And I just was like, oh my God, so it wasn't my posture. It wasn't me doing something to cause this pain for myself. I actively have a problem inside my body that I can't fix. And then they gave me all these amazing exercises like cat cowpos and everything.

It just really helped. But the second thing that I really struggled with was polycystic ovaries. And the way that it was discovered was because I used to get these really, painful cystic acne pimples all over my face. They never come to a head. They just sit under your skin and they cause you so much pain. And I went to a dermatologist and they gave prescrib me some creams and they were like, you know, they're retinodes and this, that and the other should help. None of it helped. And then so finally my dermatologist said, I want you to go and get yourself tested for both polycystic and endometriosis because sometimes you know, for polycystic, they

they say that you put on weight, sometimes you don't have to put on weight and you can have all of the symptoms. And I was so lucky that this one dermatologist who's probably seen it before went, go and get yourself tested, got myself tested. And yeah, I have polycystic ovaries and major fertility issues with polycystic ovaries. One in three women suffers with this. But it takes 10 years of presenting with symptoms before you get diagnosed. The pimples weren't because I wasn't eating properly. They were not because I had done something to my skin. They were not, you know, all of the problems I was having with my body.

It wasn't because I had bad posture. What do young girls do when we can't control the outer world around us? We try to control our bodies as much as we can, and this is how we end up with eating disorders. That's so many of the young women that I know, including myself, went through it as teenagers. Well, again, I relate to so much about, what you're saying, as you know, because we've bonded over this, I also have a long fertility

journey. Yes. And I think you've identified something so crucial there, which is that as women, I mean, many women, let's not say all women, but we are so conditioned often by social strictures to internalise bodily failure as our own to carry. And as you rightly say, then we seek to control it. And if we are alpha-type people, we... used to working hard, putting in the effort and getting the results, and then suddenly you're confronted with something that isn't responding to this strategy. And on top of that, my experience of the medical system is that it encourages women to internalize that failure. That so often the medical language for women is the language of failure. So when it comes to fertility, I've spoken about

this before, but very often I was told I was failing to respond to IVF drugs. A friend of mine was told she had an incompetent cervix, you know, inhospitable womb. These are, these are phrases that luckily now are changing. But definitely at the time, you felt that you were bearing the brunt of that. How much was that your experience that you were being told that you were wrong in some way? Yeah, this is like there's something wrong with your womb, right? Like that's literally, the language around it. There's something wrong with your womb, aka you are doing something wrong that is causing it. And I, like, I remember like feeling, even with polycystic ovaries, like it's been diagnosed now and everything, I remember that feeling, I must have done something to have

caused my ovaries to be polycystic. Interesting. I'm so sorry you felt that. But so many of us do, I think. You know, I think because again, I come from a culture where I remember watching, divorce was not common when I was growing up. And I think a couple of my mom's friends, some of the most incredible women you will ever meet, like just absolute badasses, right? And were in like relationships with maybe not the kindest of people, went through a divorce, only a couple of them. The amount of people, despite all of everyone knowing that that person that they were with

was the one and the wrong, still they got blamed. for it. Still, they were told like, there's something wrong with you because why couldn't you just make it work? And so culturally, I kind of come from a space where women are blamed. Women are blamed even when there's a glaringly, when it's glaringly obvious that it's not there for it. So for me, I felt like, for a long time, I thought maybe it was because I had needy, I ended up with polycystic ovaries. I was like, maybe that was it. Like I punished my body so severely for not performing and like, you know, and controlled it to the degree that I ended up with this, like something to do with nutrition, surely. And it's so weird how once an idea like that

gets into your head, it doesn't go away. It's like with an ED. It doesn't ever fully go away. Like there's always something that could trigger it. I'll never forget. I was really young the first time they kind of sort of suspected it, but it was shut down quite quickly because just the idea for my parents that their daughter might not be able to have a child was so difficult for them to bear. I must have been about 14. I was having really painful periods. That's something that I go through such painful periods. And so my mom took me to the doctor. And so the doctor was like she may have fertility issues because there wasn't a word for it quite then. And I came home and my mom tells my dad and the first thing he says is, why my kid? Why my kid?

And I was 14 years old And I remember thinking, why anyone's kid? Right? But also imagine how it feels to be a child and hearing that. Yes. Because then you feel like I did this. I must have done something to make him feel like that.

And he didn't mean it that way. But that's how I perceived it. He was just sad as any father would be when they're confronted with difficult news. But I perceived it as no, I did something wrong because look at what I've done to him by being this way. What is your relationship with the idea of children now? You know, it's very funny.

I've got lots of children and community around me because all of my friends have children. And children I've looked after, I've taken to school and, you know, made food for it and stuff. I've got nieces and I've got a godson, guide son, because they're not religious, so like a guide son as they say. And I just love kids. I think they're fantastic. I think they have these bright, open eyes and they look at the world like there's so much hope in it. And what better thing to be a poet or an auntie poet of these beautiful bright-eyed children? my fiance and I, we've talked about it recently.

And we are like kind of moving into that space of thinking, yeah, that's, we should, we should maybe consider because we can give a child a lot. But then also my consistent worry is the world around us and climate change and what kind of word am I bringing my child into and will my child have like a full natural life. So these are big things. So even if I was, and I, you know, my fiancé lovely gentleman, he says that you'd make a fantastic mother. He'd make a great dad. But do we want what kind, do we want to bring a child into a world that we know?

So these are big questions. I think every parent has to ask themselves this question before they bring little people into this world because they're a huge responsibility. And we've spoken quite a bit in this conversation about your parents. and the ups and downs and the depths of your relationship with them. Where are you now as a daughter? You know, I've watched both my parents over the last four years go through something, which has just left me in awe of them. In the last four years, I've lost a grandparent here.

Thank you. It's been, I'd lost my grandmother two weeks ago, so it's been new. Oh, Nikita, I'm so sorry. Thank you. She was the, she was my heart. and I'm very lucky to have been her granddaughter. I lost my grandfather her husband a year ago and he was my radical elder.

He gave me all my good history and my good politics and his strong Kashmiri man with a very big tender heart. I will miss them forever. But my parents have just been the most incredible people because they navigated not just death but palliative. care, how incredible and how brave and how strong they are to have done all of these things for their parents and have, it's not easy to watch a parent go. And all of my grandparents, they lived to their 90s and they suffered in the end. It's not easy to watch a parent suffer.

Someone who is, both of my grandfathers were in the army, there were these massive figures in our lives, but especially my parents' lives. I think watching your parents go through that become the elders and the family entirely shifts your perspective on them. And it teaches you that now you are the ones that have to look after because eventually you will become those elders. That transition teaches you so much.

And I am so in awe, especially of my mother, the grace with which she has, you know, held people through her parents' death. My brother and me, her mother when her husband died, Like, what a woman. I can use those same words about you, Nikita Gil. What grace, what strength, what poetry. Thank you so much for the work that you give us.

And thank you for the woman that you are. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Same because you are incredible. I'm so privileged to be here. Thank you so much for listening and watching. This episode has been brought to you by Dove Whole Body Deodorant. Please do follow how to fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts,

please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.