Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poets and Poems: Nikita Gill and “Wild Embers”

By Glynn Young 4 Comments

Glasses Wild Embers by Nikita Gill

Nikita Gill is a social media phenomenon, and may very well rank as the No. 1 poet on Instagram because of her celebrity. Rejected by more than 100 publishers, she turned to social media, especially Instagram, where she has more than 271,000 followers (at last count). She might even be called a “viral poet.”

Like social media, Gill bends genres. Her first published work, Your Body is an Ocean (2012), is ostensibly a collection of stories. But the stories often resemble poems. The same is true for what might initially be called a memoir, Your Soul is a River (2016). These are works that don’t easily fit standard categories, just like social media.

Nikita Gill

Nikita Gill

A London-based poet, writer, visual artist, and photographer, Gill blends poetry, stories, and myths and legends in her writing. Her work has an especially strong sense of the visual, employing simple yet powerful images. And all of that comes to the fore in her more recent work, a collection of poetry, Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire, and Beauty, comprising 131 mostly short poems. The brevity is conducive for posting on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels.

If there is a unifying theme to Wild Embers, it is one combining feminism with common emotional feelings. Gill mirrors the feelings and experiences of many young people, especially young women, as they deal with relationships (good, bad, and indifferent) and love.

 

 

Why She Stayed

Wild Embers by Nikita GillAnd before
you ask her
why she stayed,
look at the way
a caged bird
sometimes
refuses to leave,
even when
its cage door
is wide open.
Even when
you call it
softly.
Even when you
try to take it
out of its prison
to set it free.

And perhaps then
you will understand.

The collection includes two notable series of poems. One reinterprets the heroines of fairy tales, Grimm’s and Disney’s, to provide a different understanding of Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Alice in Wonderland. The other turns to the women of Greek mythology, and considers Helen of Troy, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Persephone, Hera, and Demeter.

While not included in this collection, Gill’s reading of an earlier poem, “When Your Daughter Asks,” provides a good example of the brevity, visual impact, and theme of many of her poems.

Wild Embers won’t explain how or why someone becomes popular on social media. But it does provide an almost visual representation of what that popularity looks like, a strong combination of cultural issues, imagery, and brevity.

Related:

Poetry in the Social Media Age: An Interview with Nikita Gill by The Culture Trip

Browse more poets and poems

Photo by Smabs Sputzer, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young, author of the novels Dancing Priest and A Light Shining, and Poetry at Work.

__________________________

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025
  • Czeslaw Milosz, 1946-1953: “Poet in the New World” - May 13, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, Britain, London, poetry, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. Maureen says

    December 5, 2017 at 3:15 pm

    Finally, someone to rival Billy Collins.

    Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      December 5, 2017 at 7:33 pm

      Interesting point, Maureen.

      Reply
  2. Donna says

    December 11, 2017 at 1:02 pm

    Glynn, that poem you shared, Why She Stayed, really struck a chord in me. I really like this viral poet!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Poets and Poems: Atticus and 'The Dark Between Stars' | Tweetspeak Poetry says:
    September 7, 2021 at 7:52 am

    […] popular Instagram poets, along with Rupi Karr, R.H. Sin, Incognito (another anonymous poet), Nikita Gill, Neal Sehgal, and others. Many of them publish love poems, but Atticus focuses almost exclusively […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy