The Life Of Bryony - The Life of You – Poet Nikita Gill on Rage Writing, Recharging Your Battery, and Reconnecting with Nature

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

This week, I’m joined by the poet and author Nikita Gill for a conversation that feels like one of those late-night chats where you see yourself a little more clearly afterwards. I asked Nikita to share the three essential things she can’t live without – her answers were honest, illuminating, and full of surprises. We talk about why nurturing simple rituals matters, how to find hope in the everyday, and the quiet ways we can all anchor ourselves when life feels a bit much. If you’ve ever wondered what really keeps someone creative, grounded, and a little bit magical, this episode will speak to you.   BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE Nikita's book, Hekate, a retelling in verse of the life of a child of war turned all-powerful goddess of witchcraft, necromancy and crossroads, is available to buy now.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU Got something to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512 - just start your message with LOB. Use the WhatsApp shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB Prefer email? Drop me a line at [e-mail]   If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it – it really helps! Bryony xx   CREDITS: Host: Bryony Gordon Guest: Nikita Gill Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig   Assistant Producer: Ceyda Uzun   Studio Manager: Sam Chisholm   Editor: Luke Shelley   Exec Producer: Mike Wooller    A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seriously popular. Welcome to this bonus episode of The Life of Briney. Today, I am getting even more nosy than normal in the best way possible. There is nothing which makes me feel more centred than being out amongst the trees. It is the most soothing feeling in the world. Nikita Gill is back and I'm going to put her on the spot and find out about her essentials that create magic in her world. Now, Nikita, tell us the three things you can't live without. Yes.

So it is my journal in which I can pour all of my rage. How many of these journals do you have? I think I've gone through three this year of this year alone. Yeah, I mean, it is a rageful year. It's been a rageful year for like a while now, this this is this has been a particularly rageful year um so yeah i love that you say that with a smile on your face this particularly rageful to yeah and tell talk to me about the because journaling is obviously it's a thing yeah yeah yeah yeah taught me when do you do it and do you do it every day

uh i like to do three pages of long hand every day um just because i think it centers and grounds me. But the rage journal, I just write in it as soon as I start feeling that burning, searing, hot crimson inside me, lava, where I'm just like, I have to get this out, otherwise it's going to consume me. I'm very scared of becoming bitter. Because to become bitter is to become cynical. And then I will lose that beautiful, what we call Russ in India, which is like the juice of life, basically. And I can't afford to do that. I'm a poet. My job is to inspire people, to feel hopeful, and to see the world for what it is. And if I just see the darkness, then I've lost my soul, right?

So this journal is everything that is dark that lives inside me, all the rage, all the fire, all the fury. And sometimes I use that in my work. Sometimes I will say, I will talk about the rage in my work. I will talk about righteous anger. I will talk about how you can turn rage into it. action how rage can be a really positive thing if you know how to wield it properly like a weapon as opposed to you know as a sledgehammer you don't need to use it like a sledgehammer so yeah so you but you also every morning do you do three pages of long have I try I try every morning

some mornings are just I have too much other work on and I just can't do it but most mornings most mornings I wake up and I do those three pages of it's like a a brain dump. You know, you get it all out. And, you know, 80% of what I write in a month isn't useful. But there'll be a sentence here or there, which will become the seed of a story or a poem. And it's always really good to go back over what you've written in a month and see what you can use. And also see how far you've come from the beginning of the month. It's great. So it's like a cycle. Yeah, basically. Women are circadian. We work in cycles. You know, we're not linear. and I really believe in that

and so I just obey my body and my mind when they tell me to be cyclic in things I love that okay so what's number two so the second thing is a walk in the woods there is nothing which makes me feel more centered

than being out amongst the trees like it just it is the most soothing feeling in the world like and I try very hard to like not look at my phone or even leave it if I'm close enough to home i'll leave it at home you know because i have just two minutes away from my house there's like a little forest so i just go there and i just i just it just really centers me it really

centers me and there's something about being amongst those trees and being on that land on that ground that i just go oh this is what it's supposed to be all about because trees don't trees just are have you ever considered that just being like we're supposed to be here human beings, right? I wanted to ask you if you'd ever read a book by the author Richard Powers called The Overstory. I haven't read it, no. It is, I think if I had to go through my list of three things that are essential, or three books that are essential to me, I think the overstory would be on it.

And it's a novel about trees. Yeah, I love it. I think I need to read this. And the trees are, it's so epic. I read it when I was about one year so. So I was like alive with the possibility of I needed guidance and that book gave me a lot of guidance. But it does talk to trees as a, I mean, you mention it in one of your poems actually about the forest in, is it Utah that, you know, it's that is, I mean, it's one living thing. Yeah.

All of the trees communicate to each other and they're all connected by roots under the ground. And also it goes back to what you were saying in the main episode. which I hope everyone has listened to about the kind of they're these permanent beings that have seen so much and they kind of, I love being right-sized and trees are very good at right-sizing you, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's also scientific evidence, research that when we lie under a tree and look up at a tree, our heart rates lower. They do. They do. because it's the same as when you look at the night sky, right?

And you see, like, stars all across the night sky. There is no way to look at the night sky, see when the stars are out, and you can see them all, and not feel some or there's just no way to do that. I started doing this series on Reels. I struggle with insomnia because, of course, I do. You're too busy looking at the night sky, Nikita. That's what I do. When I struggle with my insomnia, I go out and I look at the night sky.

and it's beautiful where I am because I don't live in a city where I am like by the forest and I look up and I see the stars often I sit and I write about the night sky and I write about our connection as human beings to the night sky and one of my favorite lines which I've written recently is about how the water that is inside our bodies because we are 70% water is it's it's it's

just it's borrowed water. It's borrowed from a hurricane or a storm that happened last week or the river that you visited like a short while ago. That is where the water in your body comes from. You are as much a part of this earth and that night sky as you are of this flesh, basically. And to remember that, you need to go into the forest or you need to look up at the stars. Because if you're only looking ahead or down at your phone or down at your phone and your doom scrolling you forget that so this series which i've written maybe sometimes it can be a bit repetitive but there are so many people who have responded to it and gone oh yeah that's what it's supposed to be about you're 93% stardust my poem which is now drinking age it is so old but i wrote that poem when i was a teenager and that poem has

found its way around the world into theaters, into, like, the hands of the most, like, unusual people into the hands of, like, school children. There will be people who ask me about that poem who I wouldn't expect to have ever heard of it. I knew who the, this is the way I knew that, like, that poem was famous, though, is I found it scrolled on a bathroom wall. Wow. That's how you know you've made it as a poet. It's like when someone scrolls your poem on a bathroom wall. And it's such a simple poem is just two verses right it's like we have calcium in our bones iron in our veins carbon in our souls nitrogen in our brains 93% star dust with souls made of flames we are all just stars that have people names I love this where was the bathroom this is in one of the

ages ago this is one of the airport airport toilet that's where it was yeah it's a good place for it to be yeah that's when you know made it as a poet though someone has graffitied your poem on a bathroom wall like all the bathroom stalls and all the world i was like that's me i i i wrote that yeah so so i feel like that grounds me so being in the forest looking up in the night sky that's my second thing your third thing my bed man i love my bed talk to us about your bed like because i because beds are because beds are I don't understand people who can just go to sleep anywhere or in any bed. I don't go to sleep in my bed.

That's not just all I do. That's going to sound like a euphemism. It is not a euphemism. But it's fine if it is, Nikita. It's fine if it is. Beds are for many things. Beds are for many things. And that's exactly why I love my bed because it is for many things.

I think when, so I'm a, I know I don't come across as this on this podcast, but I am quite introverted. think I'm a poet. I can be quite introverted. And I think I run out a social battery. And I love lying in my bed and staring at the ceiling after I've completely run out a social battery and knowing I have nothing else to do for the next eight hours, 12 hours, whatever, other than lie there and look up at my ceiling. Or maybe I've got a projector in my bedroom. I put on like a movie and it becomes like a cinema space. Or I just put up, you know, one of those YouTube videos of like the rain falling on a window.

Yeah. Or you can turn it into like just as a storm in the middle of the woods in Malaysia somewhere, but you've got it in your bedroom now. It's great. I love the, my favorite thing is being in bed and it pouring with rain outside and feeling cozy. And last night, as part of my preparation for this podcast, I was, I was lying on my bed reading one of your poetry collections.

I think it was wild embers. And the weather was as wild as the title of the book outside. It was like the rain was hammering on the window. And it was just like one of the most heavenly moments of my year so far. So thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you for reading Wild Embers eight years since I wrote that. That's not that long ago.

Oh, my God. Like just to tell like a last anecdote, which is quite funny. And it really does crack me up till date. someone came up to me it wasn't for Wild Embers it was like books later I think it was for the girl and the goddess and I was like at an event

and I was on a panel and this lady comes up to me amazing like lady and she was like dressed in the fanciest like coat such a cool coat as like a pirate coat basically and she comes up to me

and she goes I really loved your book wild embryos and I'm like why is that not why did I not call it that Why? I think that could be the sequel. I guess surely.

Like, and I adore my friends this story. So now we have a group chat called the Wild Embryos. Like, what a great name. I think that should be the line name. It should be the bad name. But it also, maybe you could just have a follow up. The wild embryos, the follow up to Wild Embryos. It's such a great name.

Wild embryos. Love it. That note, we look forward to listening to Nikita Gill's new rock band, The Wild Embryos. You heard it here fast. I don't know about you, but Nikita Gill has now made it onto the list of three things I can't live without. If this episode brought you as much joy as it did me, or it made you think, about your own non-negotiables, pass it onto a friend who could use a smile. As well, please follow and subscribe because it makes the world of difference to us and allows us to continue

making wonderful content like this with Nikita. But most of all, look after yourself and I'll see you next time.