Gieve Patel is regarded as one of the prominent Indian writers in English. He belongs to the Parsi community. Patel was born in the year 1940, in Mumbai (Bombay) and practiced as a general physician. Gieve Patel is a self-instructed poet, artist and a playwright. His first show was held in the city of Mumbai in the year 1966 and went on to have some of the grand exhibitions in India and abroad. The human conditions, along with its uneven edges which are not free from poetry are expressed on the canvasses of Gieve Patel. Sharply aware of ordinary man, Patel`s figures are often placed within cityscapes and as they move about executing their chores, there is close observation of their postures, clothes and stances. He lives and works in Mumbai.

Gieve Patel is one of the Indian literary personalities who writes in English. His poetry includes Poems and How Do You Withstand Body. There are two unpublished plays to his credit. `Princes`, the play written by Patel, was performed in the year 1970 by the Theatre Group, Mumbai (Bombay). His poems are published in The New Writing in India, Illustrated Weekly of India, Poetry India and Young Commonwealth Poets. A few of his notable poems like On Killing a Tree, Nargol, Servants, Naryal Purnima, O My very own Cadaver, Commerce, etc, have appeared in Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets edited by R. Parthasarathy.

Gieve Patel is considered to be the poet of the body since human body is a recurrent theme in a majority of his poems. In his poems, the body acts as a living metaphor. His sympathies are with the oppressed or down-trodden and anyone devoid of his basic right to live. In an appropriately titled poem, The Ambiguous Fate of Gieve Patel, he being neither a part of Hinduism nor Islam in India, he grieves the isolation faced by the Parsis in the starting line of the short poem based on communal riots, when he writes; "To be no part of this hate is deprivation". As a Parsi observer, he cannot choose to be a part of either side, he poignantly remarks, "Planets focus their fires/into a worm of destruction/Edging along the continent. Bodies/Turn ashen and shrivel. I only burn my tail." He is thus counted among the well-known Parsi writers in India.

Gieve Patel has been carrying on a poetry workshop in Rishi Valley School for a decade or more. Patel has recently edited a poetry collection and the same got published as a book in the year 2006.