Tanisha Changes the Word
Tanisha Chopra is part of Change the Word Coventry, our poetry collective of people from around the world. Tanisha has written poetry with us since February this year, and in that time has explored everything from motherhood to memory, the sparks of first love to the perils of love unrequited.
In our very first workshop together, Tanisha told us how she feels about being part of Change the Word:
“Here you can open up about your feelings without any judgment. Here there are people from all around the world meeting and it actually brings some positivity in you. And in a change of environment, completely different from what you do in your daily life, it is a really good way to connect with more people and connect with yourself.”
We have loved working with Tanisha over the last few months – she brings such a spark to every workshop, and such vivacity to her words and her performance. BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire interviewed Tanisha when she performed as part of our Dome in a Day celebrations during Coventry Welcomes festival in June 2019. She told them about the journey that brought her here to be part of the group:
“I had been living in Afghanistan for nearly all my life, then I got married and then came here. Coming here was like an emotional rollercoaster. It was really hard coping with my pregnancy and then my kids and with the new environment, getting used to it, it was really, I would say, a disaster.
“But slowly, slowly, I made friends, got a chance to be part of Change the Word and I just couldn’t refuse it. I really wanted to do something, and I never knew that it would lead to us to this day writing poetry and publishing our own book. I feel really proud of myself.
“The people are really amazing, they’re so friendly and they’ve helped us develop our skills, motivate us, they appreciated our efforts and they were our mentors leading us to the right path. It was really therapeutic.”
Many of the Change the Word collective refer to the group as feeling just like a family – and indeed, we’re all part of the Good Chance family! Tanisha is no different:
“We are one big family now. Everyone has written from their real-life experiences. That really helps you feel connected,”
Tanisha said on HillzFM, the community radio station that featured Change the Word to share the group’s poetry with the whole city.
And we’d feel wrong not to share some of Tanisha’s poetry with you ourselves! In a workshop where all the Change the Word group realised that the smell of rain was one of the things they remembered from their homes in many different countries, Tanisha explored her memories of Afghanistan in this delicate, wistful poem:
Home Early in the Morning
I wake up and go out to the balcony
feeling the warm rays of sunshine
on my face, wind caressing my hair
opening my senses. Pouring water to
the flower pots, leaving an amazing
fragrance of sand & leaves. Making a wish.
Tanisha’s poetry is published in the first ever Change the Word anthology. You can buy it and read poetry by everyone in the Coventry collective from our Good Chance shop, and profits are donated to Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre’s destitution fund.
