kula: a Sanskrit word meaning ancestry, bloodline, family, clan, village.
kula: the first four letters of my family name Kular, the name of my ancestral village in rural Punjab. My roots.
My work centres the spirit of ‘kula’~ creative and alchemical spaces bringing women together in community with shared intention and purpose. Creating words and sacred artefacts in collaboration with my ancestors and Mother Earth.
Based in Sheffield, UK – I’m a creative facilitator, writer, maker, and mentor – specialising in creative writing & making arts for healing, liberation, courage and resistance.
I believe everyone is inherently and divinely creative. That everyone has the right to write and make their hearts out. This stuff is in our bones. Inherited from our ancestors. Waiting to be expressed through us.
My workshops, courses and mentoring centre these values, encouraging women/people of colour to discover their own individual and collective voices through joyful and therapeutic creative writing and nature-allied writing arts, therapeutic zine-making and mixed media arts, rest and meditation, nature and healing.
I believe we need to tell our stories, create our own wild archives – because if we don’t tell them, who else will?
My work stands on the shoulders of many incredible scholars, mentors, teachers, writers and my ancestors – to whom I am eternally grateful.*
A little bit more about me…
From being born and raised in Sheffield to Punjabi/Sikh working class migrant parents to leaving school at 16 years old with 3 o-levels and being told I could never be a writer – to severe burnout, grief, loss and chronic illnesses – I reconnected with the power of words and creative arts in my late forties as an act of radical healing, as a way to write myself back home, transform my life, and to learn to live well within my limitations.
This journey led to studying for an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes (Metanoia Institute) and finally liberating myself from twenty years as a Social Worker. My debut poetry collection (un)interrupted tongues explored this journey towards liberation and healing, exploring intersections of race, creativity and nature.
I know creativity has the power to radically heal and transform our lives. Creative projects, mixed-media arts and hand-making journals were a crucial part of my recovery and healing from a traumatic brain injury sustained in summer 2022. When reading and writing were too painful, I cut, stuck and collaged my heart out until slowly-slowly I could face writing (a bit) again.
Nature and the outdoors continue to be a huge part of my journey and reflected in all my work. I’m most often found on my tiny allottment or roaming through the woods – pen in hand – creating my latest archive.
Explore my recent projects here.
Explore my gallery of happenings here.
Finally, nothing gives me greater joy than hearing other folks read their words at workshops, share their creativity or sharing how creativity has made a difference to their lives. This is heart work and I’m blessed to do it!
* I’ll be adding the names of those who’ve inspired me soon!
“Working with and alongside Dal feels like the comforting embrace of a familial hug - I don't know how else to describe it. In her writing workshops, she both holds you and sets you free, to explore your craft in a space where it is supported and celebrated. Our True Nature really is the safe space I have been looking for as a woman of colour and a writer for so long and I'm so grateful to have found it!”
Evie Muir, Radical Rest, founder of Peaks of Colour.
