The Coconut Girl is a collection of poems containing material that is from the Indian, female point of view with an insight into Punjabi culture. The collection provides refreshing and new viewpoint of the changing face of multi cultural Britain. The Coconut Girl features poetry of deep imagery, not least in some of the poems exploring the experience of the female body post-operatively, such as in My Womb Is A Park Of Carnage…
The Coconut Girl along with The Barging Buddhi and Other Poems (Black Pear Press) have been accepted into the National Poetry Library.
SUNITA THIND is a Bedford born Derby based published female, Asian British BAME poet and writer that has had a debut collection of multicultural poetry that focuses on living between two cultures, British and Punjabi. Sunita is workshop facilitator, speaker and performance poet. She has had poetry and short stories published in various literary magazines, ezines and journals. She is a freelance writer for Take A Break Magazine and has been featured in Metro, Gal Dem, Mslexia and more.
She has dabbled in many things including being primary and secondary school teacher and trained as a make up artist and is a professional model. Being an Ovarian Cancer survivor she is grateful to have survived it but I am not in remission yet, she is a campaigner and fundraiser for related charities. She has been awarded a substantial writing grant by the British Arts Council to write her memoir.
She also loves to sing and take singing lessons and is married and has a beautiful, male platinum white Samoyed called Ghost.
Sunita, thank you for being with us today. Tell us a bit more about "The Coconut Girl." What were Six things that went into the writing of this book?
Lots of herbal tea, chocolate, researching my Punjabi and Malaysian heritage, long walks with my dog and scribbling any and every idea, magical word or phrase in a note pad.
Five things you need to get some writing done?
Full fat coke cola, sweets, chocolates, my laptop, tv in the background and a pen and pad.
Four types of readers who will enjoy this book.
Fans of Sylvia Plath, Rupi Kaur, Nafeesa Hamid, Nikita Gill.
Three challenges you face as a writer/ you faced in the writing of this book?
Being disciplined and motivated to write everyday, I always find any distraction to keep me from writing. I find writing poetry easier than memoir, lock down burnout suffering from Ovarian Cancer, Long Covid and Surgical menopause symptoms, and fatigue.
Two poets that have influenced your work in general?
Sylvia Plath and Sylvia Plath.
One word to describe this collection?
Multidimensional.
Disclaimer: "EMC's 6 things" interview series seeks to promote the artist and their featured writing and is in no way an endorsement of any of said artist's services, opinions or other work outside of this feature.