Occupation Author, poet Ethnicity Punjabi Notable works Milk and Honey Siblings Prabh Kaur | Language English Citizenship Canadian Nationality Canadian | |
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Born 5 October 1992 (age 24) ( 1992-10-05 ) Books Milk and Honey, 1 NRI GIRL Similar Lang Leav, Warsan Shire, Nikita Gill, Tyler Knott Gregson, Michael Faudet Profiles | ||
Rupi kaur reads from milk and honey
Rupi Kaur is a Canadian feminist poet, writer, and spoken word artist. She is popularly known as an "Instapoet" for the traction she gains from posting her poems online, with Instagram being her primary platform. She published a book of poetry and prose entitled milk and honey in 2015, which deals with themes of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity.
Contents
- Rupi kaur reads from milk and honey
- I m taking my body back rupi kaur tedxkc
- Life
- Work
- Inspiration
- milk and honey
- Controversy
- References
I m taking my body back rupi kaur tedxkc
Life
Rupi Kaur was born in Punjab, India and emigrated with her parents to Toronto, Canada when she was 4. As a child, she was inspired by her mother to draw and paint. She used to write poems to her friends on their birthdays or messages to her middle school crushes. She studied Rhetoric and Professional Writing at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. She currently resides in Brampton, Ontario with her parents and four siblings. Kaur and her family moved frequently, a total of seven times, before settling in Brampton.
Work
Kaur began her career in poetry online through social media websites like Instagram and Tumblr. Among her more notable works is her photo-essay on menstruation, described as a piece of visual poetry intended to challenge societal menstrual taboos. Other common themes found throughout her works include abuse, femininity, love, and heartbreak. In October 2015, Kaur published her collective works in the book milk and honey. Rupi Kaur has said that empowerment is her favorite thing to write about because "its like becoming my own best friend and giving myself the advice I need" Rupi has contracted to release two more books with Andrews McMeel Publishing and Schuster Canada, the first of which is to be released in fall of 2017.
Inspiration
Rupi Kaur says she draws inspiration from other people's stories and experiences. She is inspired by writers like Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, and Warsan Shire and started writing poetry seriously in November 2013. She also draws inspiration from Sikh scriptures in her writing and her life. Rupi Kaur’s passion for writing began when she was young. Kaur entered and won a speech and essay competition in middle school. She also took to writing letters to friends and crushes, and eventually started journaling. Throughout high school, she anonymously shared her writing, and in 2013, she began sharing her work under her own name on Tumblr. Kaur took her writing to Instagram in 2014 and began adding simple illustrations. All of her works are done in all lowercase and the only punctuation they contain is periods. She says she decided to write this way to honor her culture because, in gurmukhi script, there is only one case and only periods are used. She also says that she enjoys the equality of letters and that the style reflects her worldview.
milk and honey
Kaur's first and only book is an anthology titled milk and honey. A collection of poetry, prose, and hand-drawn illustrations, the book is split into four chapters, and each chapter deals with a different theme. As with the title, Kaur does not use capitalization throughout the poetry in the collection - everything is written in lower-case. The sections are titled "the hurting", "the loving," "the breaking," and "the healing." Kaur originally self-published the book of poetry on Amazon in 2014, but it was so popular that a publisher, Andrews McMeel Publishing, decided to pick it up for a second print in October 2015. The book was on the top-seller list for Canadian literature on Amazon, amongst writers such as Margaret Atwood. It also landed in the number two spot for Amazon's bestseller list for poetry. The collection even made it to the New York Times bestseller list and remained on it for 25 consecutive weeks. As of October 2016, it has sold over half a million copies. milk and honey focuses on themes such as love, loss, trauma, sexual violence, womanhood, and healing.
Controversy
In March 2015, as part of a photo project for her Visual Rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo, Kaur posted an Instagram photo of herself lying fully clothed in bed, facing away from the camera, with a menstrual blood stain on her sweatpants and on the bedsheet. The picture was part of a menstruation themed photo-series to destigmatize taboos around menstruation. On her Instagram page, Kaur makes an explicit statement about such stigmatization, noting that "a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process. some are more comfortable with the pornification of women. the sexualization of women. the violence and degradation of women than this. they cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that. but will be angered and bothered by this." Instagram removed it - and the other photos in the series - twice because the picture didn't "follow (their) Community Guidelines." Kaur took to Facebook to critique the removal of the post: "Thank you Instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique. You deleted my photo twice stating that it goes against community guidelines. I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in an underwear but not be ok with a small leak when your pages are filled with countless photos/accounts where women (so many who are underage) are objectified, pornified, and treated less than human."
The picture on Facebook was shared by thousands, went viral, and made headlines around the world. Later, Instagram restored her picture and apologized to Rupi Kaur, saying it had removed it by mistake.
