Today is the 26th birthday [born Oct 4, 1992] of best selling (in part, due to her use of social media) poet Rupi Kaur, whose collections include Milk and Honey (2014) and The Sun and Her Flowers (2017), which have inspired [not necessarily critics] millions of young women, if one goes by her sales. Born in Punjab, India, and immigrating at age four years to Canada, she did not learn English until the fourth grade. After having ‘felt voiceless for so long,” she likes performing her poems with a booming mic as well as being able to put words to the complex feelings she had had no words for in childhood. She writes about womanhood,
its struggles and dreams:
… all we’ve endured
has prepared us for this
bring your hammers and fists
we have a glass ceiling to shatter
love relationships:
you ask
if we can still be friends
i explain how a honeybee
does not dream kissing
the mouth of a flower
and then settle for its leaves…
Or
...and you should see me
when my heart is broken
i don’t grieve
i shatter
Her first publication followed quite a stir she created by bringing the taboo topic of menstruation into a photo expose on Instagram. When Instagram twice removed them, she wrote "thank you Instagram for providing me with the exact response my work was created to critique." Instagram apologized. She also wrote [but in all caps], “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 okay with a small leak…”
Therapists may know something about:
i am vulnerable
to falling in love with
human beings that tear
themselves open for me...
Happy Birthday, Rupi
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