Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur was born on 4 October 1992 into a Sikh family in Punjab, India. When she was three, her family immigrated to Canada. Her father had already left India before her birth and was not present; due to financial struggles, he sent supplies back for her upbringing. The family lived in a one-bedroom basement flat, where Kaur, her parents, and three younger siblings all shared a bed. They eventually settled in Brampton, Ontario, a community with a large South Asian diaspora, and her father worked as a truck driver. While living in Japan, Kaur’s father wrote Punjabi poetry to her mother, who practiced painting. At age five, Kaur was given a paintbrush and made to draw, taking up her mother’s hobby. Poetry was a constant part of her faith and daily life; she recalls evenings when her father would spend hours analyzing a single verse. As a child, she felt embarrassed by her mother’s accent and tried to distance herself, often self-conscious about her identity. Her mother could be distant, especially during Kaur’s periods, and menstruation—along with childhood abuse—often left her debilitated. Her relationship with her parents, particularly her mother, became turbulent in adolescence, with arguments over everyday matters that Kaur later saw as attempts to preserve their original culture. She witnessed relatives and friends experiencing domestic violence or sexual abuse, and seeing her parents face racism made her coy. This environment led her to develop what she calls “constant survival mode.”

Kaur performed kirtan and Indian classical music for several years. Her career ambitions shifted often—she wanted to be an astronaut, a social worker, or a fashion designer—but her father barred her from studying fashion design in university. She loved reading from a young age, finding it eased her loneliness, though English was her second language (she first learned it at age 10). She considered books a form of friendship. Her confidence and social skills improved in fourth grade. Initially, her aversion to English made her effectively mute for a time. In middle school, she entered speech competitions, winning one in seventh grade, which gave her hope despite bullying and isolation. She was an easy target because of her appearance and vulnerability. After sixth grade, her confidence grew, and writing and performing helped her “find her voice.” High school was the low point of her education, where she endured what she calls toxic care; she felt relief after cutting ties with people she describes as “very dangerous for me.” Poetry comforted her as she dealt with self-consciousness. She read authors including Amrita Pritam, Maya Angelou, Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, and J. K. Rowling. Kaur attended Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario, where she began exploring creative writing and poetry. She then studied rhetoric and professional writing at the University of Waterloo. She taught creative-writing classes to high school and college students. When studying poetry, she says she would “agonize over each and every word.”

She first performed poetry in 2009, finding spoken-word “really natural” and describing her first show as “like a…”. She rose to fame on Instagram, eventually becoming a popular poet through three collections. In March 2015, she posted a series of photos to Instagram showing herself with menstrual blood stains on her clothing and bedsheets, taken for a visual rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo. Instagram removed the images; Kaur wrote a viral critique of the company’s actions. The incident boosted her poetry’s traction, and her initially self-published debut collection, *Milk and Honey* (2014), was reprinted by Andrews McMeel Publishing to widespread commercial success. Considered at the forefront of the “Instapoetry” style, her work uses simple language and explores South Asian identity, immigration, and femininity, drawing on her childhood and personal life. Line drawings accompany poems with stark subject matter. After *Milk and Honey*’s success, Kaur struggled through creating her second collection, *The Sun and Her Flowers* (2017). Her third collection, *Home Body* (2020), was influenced by a desire to feel less pressure for commercial success and by the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaur has a large social media following, especially on Instagram. Since its 2014 release, *Milk and Honey* has sold over 11 million copies and been translated into 43 languages. Her poetry has received mixed critical reception, praised for its influence and derided for its verse.