Poetry

I am a bilingual poet. I use my parents’ first names – Padma-Uday – as my second name for literary writing.

I write poems in English and sometimes, in the language of my birth, Hindi. I have derived great value from reading poetry of great poets, and some of my favourites are Louise Glück, Elizabeth Bishop, Maya Angelou, Mahadevi Verma, Arundhati Subramanian, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Amrita Pritam, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, TS Eliot, Michael Ondaatje, Mary Oliver, Erica Jong, Audre Lourde, Nikki Giovanni, and Lola Ridge.

I studied English literature in my undergraduate years, before training as an economic and business historian. I studied MSc in Economic History at London School of Economics and Political Science. Originally from India, I live in the UK.