{"id":14395,"date":"2021-09-20T22:36:35","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T02:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.ryerson.ca\/asianheritage\/?page_id=14395"},"modified":"2026-08-07T13:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:35:18","slug":"nisha-patel","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/authors\/nisha-patel\/","title":{"rendered":"Nisha Patel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Nisha Patel is a queer spoken word poet and artist and workshop leader. She is the City of Edmonton\u2019s 8th Poet Laureate. Patel earned a BCom from the University of Alberta where she majored in business economics and law. In 2019, she co-founded a national queer femme South Asian artist collective, Maza Arts, and in 2020 co-founded Moon Jelly House<\/a>, a publishing house centring the work of marginalized poets. Patel has authored and co-authored several chapbooks published by Glass Buffalo Publishing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Coconut: Poems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2021.
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Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In her debut collection, Canadian National Slam Champion Nisha Patel commands her formidable insight and youthful, engaged voice to relay experiences of racism, sexuality, empowerment, grief, and love. These are vitally political, feminist poems for young women of colour, with bold portrayals of confession, hurt, and healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coconut<\/em> rises fiercely like the sun. These poems bestow light and warmth and the ability to witness the world, but they ask for more than basking; they ask readers to grow and warn that they can be burnt. Above all, Nisha Patel\u2019s work questions and challenges propriety and what it means to be a good woman, second-generation immigrant, daughter, consumer, and lover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Awards and Honours<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

2022 Regional Book of the Year (Alberta Book Publishing Awards) (Finalist)
2022 Book Design (Alberta Book Publishing Awards)<\/a>(Co-winner) — NeWest Press, designed by Natalie Olsen of Kisscut Design<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Fate Worse than Death<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024.
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Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A Fate Worse than Death<\/em> is a stunning poetic investigation of the worthiness of disabled life as told through the author’s evaluation of her own medical records over the course of a decade. Living with treatment-resistant diabetes, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and complex chronic pain, Nisha Patel reveals how her multiple disabilities intertwine with her day-to-day life, even when care and treatments are not available. As she works through bouts of illness, neglect, and care, Patel reveals how poetry provides her a way to resist the sway of medical hegemony and instead offer complex accounts of pain, sickness, and anger, but also love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navigating the menial and capitalist systems of health care and paperwork, documentation, and forms, Patel uses clinical texts in visual poems that show how words like patient<\/em> and client<\/em> underscore medical access and denial of coverage more than words like person<\/em> and care<\/em>. Patel asks us to consider if her life is worth living – and saving. The future of her disabled body and her desire for it is a building meditation as the collection progresses, ending not so much with a finite ending of cured illness and disease than with a look at how we can embody hope and joy in a disabled body, as it is the body that, like time, goes on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry (Chapbook)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Limited Success<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

[Edmonton]: Glass Buffalo, c2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry (Chapbook)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not a Disorder: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Poems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toronto: Gap Riot Press, 2022.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For the Record: A Poem<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2026.
forthcoming Oct 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

For the Record<\/em> is a book-length poem whose word count is set to the number of lives lost to COVID-19 in Alberta, the author’s home province\u2014which as of January 2026 sits at 7,113 people. Told in two parts, with each section recording real-time headlines, the book begins with the first COVID-related death of Cargill meat factory worker Hiep Bui. But the poem that cannot truly end does try to end with the hope embodied in the birth of Nisha Patel’s first nephew, weaving the overlapping narratives of life in precarious, unprecedented times with the bracketing of political negligence, Formula 1 racing, and gig work as an artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First performed to the Edmonton City Council as part of Patel’s tenure as Poet Laureate, the poem began at an enormous 615 words\u2014since then it has grown as the number of lives lost to the pandemic continues to grow. Patel wants us to remember the ordinary days and the extraordinary grief, as well as the monumental potential for hope, care, and empathy in our communities that COVID-19 teaches us as we continue to live through the ongoing crisis borne of and from a mass pandemic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nisha Patel personal website<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Arsenal Pulp Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher NeWest Press<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Glass Buffalo <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher Gap Riot Press<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Nisha Patel is a queer spoken word poet and artist and workshop leader. She is the City of Edmonton\u2019s 8th Poet Laureate. Patel earned a BCom from the University of Alberta where she majored in business economics and law. In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14395","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14395"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22452,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14395\/revisions\/22452"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.torontomu.ca\/asianheritage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}