Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur (born 4 October 1992) is a Canadian poet, illustrator, photographer, and author.

Born in Punjab, India, Kaur immigrated to Canada at a young age with her family.

Kaur was born into a Sikh family in Punjab, India, on 4 October 1992.

At age three, she immigrated to Canada with her parents.

Her father had left before and wasn't present for Kaur's birth.

Due to financial instability, he would send back supplies suitable for Kaur and her upbringing.

She lived with her parents and three younger siblings in a one-bedroom basement flat, where they slept in the same bed.

Her family eventually settled in Brampton, Ontario, alongside a large South Asian diaspora community, while Kaur's father worked as a truck driver.

When her father lived in Japan he'd write Punjabi poetry to Kaur's mother, who practiced painting.

At the age of five, Kaur was compelled to take up her mother's hobby of painting; she was given a paintbrush and forced to draw.

Her mother wanted to instill this art in her since it was so close to home.

Also, Kaur recalled that poetry was a recurrent aspect of her faith, spirituality and everyday life: "There were evenings when my dad would sit around for hours, analyzing a single verse for hours."

As a child, Kaur would find herself embarrassed by her mother's accent and try to distance herself.

Kaur was generally self-conscious about her identity.

Her mother was occasionally distant to Kaur, as a result of her family and culture, particularly when Kaur was on her period; menstruating, alongside her childhood abuse, often left Kaur debilitated.

Her relationship with her parents, in particular her mother, became turbulent in her adolescence; there were extensive arguments over mundane activities that Kaur later interpreted as a result of wishing to preserve their original culture.

As a young child she witnessed relatives and friends experience domestic violence or sexual abuse; watching her parents be subject to racism, she inferred, resulted in her coy disposition.

Her environment growing up led to her developing what she deemed "constant survival mode".

She performed kirtan and Indian classical music for several years.

Kaur aspired to be an astronaut or a social worker or a fashion designer; her ambitions changed frequently and her father prohibited her from studying the latter subject in university.

She expressed an interest in reading from a young age, finding it relieved her loneliness.

Her interest was hindered by having English as a second language, first learning it at age 10, although she considered her affinity for books as akin to a friendship.

Her confidence and social skills grew in fourth grade.

An initial aversion to English meant Kaur was effectively mute for a period of time.

Throughout middle school she partook in "speech competitions", winning one in seventh grade, thus helping her find progress and hope in spite of isolation and bullying.

According to Kaur, she was an easy target for ridicule due to her outward appearance and vulnerability.

She began performing poetry in 2009 and rose to fame on Instagram, eventually becoming a popular poet through her three collections of poetry.

As a result of the incident, Kaur's poetry gained more traction and her initially self-published debut poetry collection, Milk and Honey (2014), was reprinted by Andrews McMeel Publishing to widespread commercial success.

Considered to be at the forefront of the "Instapoetry" style, Kaur's work is simplistic in language and explores South Asian identity, immigration, and femininity.

Her childhood and personal life serve as sources of inspiration.

Line drawings accompany her poetry with stark subject matters.

Since its release in 2014, her collection Milk and Honey has sold over 2.5 million copies in 25 languages, spending 77 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List.

Kaur's poetry has had mixed critical reception: she has been praised for influencing the modern poetry scene, but has also been subject to parody and faced accusations of plagiarism by fellow poets.

Kaur has been included on congratulatory year-end lists by the BBC and Elle; The New Republic controversially called her the "Writer of the Decade".

In March 2015, Kaur posted a series of photographs to Instagram depicting herself with menstrual blood stains on her clothing and bedsheets.

The photographs were taken as part of a visual rhetoric course at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Instagram removed the image, in response to which Kaur wrote a viral critique of the company's actions.

After the success of Milk and Honey, Kaur describes struggling throughout the creation of her second collection, The Sun and Her Flowers (2017).

Her third collection, Home Body (2020), is influenced by a desire to feel less pressure for commercial success and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kaur has a large social media following, particularly on Instagram.