Ankita Saxena is a British-Indian poet, playwright and workshop facilitator. She has performed widely across the UK, including Ledbury Poetry Festival and Women of the World Festival at the Southbank Centre. She is a member of the 2021 Apples and Snakes Writing Room, Octavia poetry collective for womxn of colour, led by Rachel Long, and a former Barbican Young Poet and Foyle Young Poet.
She read English at Oxford, where she was Head of Events at Oxford University Poetry Society, and won the Isis Magazine ‘Borders and Bodies’ competition for her poem ‘Partition’. She has since been commissioned by The Poetry Society and St Paul’s Cathedral, and facilitated workshops for Shakespeare’s Globe, the Wellcome Collection, Lacuna Lit and the Orwell Youth Prize. She has been a headliner at Dead Women Poets Society and featured poet at the Stay at Home Festival. Her poems are published in Modern Poetry in Translation, Lacuna Lit, Desert Rose, Pennine Ink, and Wasafiri Magazine.
Please get in touch via email on: ankitasxa@gmail.com and on Twitter: @ankitawrites.
Poems
- Inheritance and Anti-Manifesto, Wasafiri, March 2020
- A Woman is Laughing, Modern Poetry in Translation, November 2020
- Baba Ghanoush, Poetry and Shaah, May 2020
- Planks, Lacuna Lit, January 2019
- Deport, Desert Rose Literary Magazine, November 2018
- YourQuote, May 2018
- The Visitation, St Paul’s Cathedral, December 2017
- Partition, The Isis Magazine, May 2015
Plays
- Halva, Bread and Roses Theatre, September 2018
- Noida, Sector 78, Bread and Roses Theatre, & The Tabard Theatre, August 2018
Interviews / Articles / Podcasts
- Wordly Women Episode 4 (podcast), September 2018
- A defence of (contemporary) poetry, Shakespeare’s Globe, July 2018
- Foyle Friday, Poetry Society, July 2018
- Protest Poetry Challenge, Poetry Society, March 2018