Rupi Kaur
Description
Rupi Kaur, a Canadian feminist poet, writer and spoken word artist based in Toronto, was born on
5th October 1992 in Punjab, India, but, immigrated with her parents to Toronto, Canada at an early age.
She had her education at Toronto and studied Rhetoric and Professional Writing at the University of
Waterloo, Ontario. She had an interest in painting and writing poems right from her childhood. In school,
she used to write poems to her friends on their birthdays. As she grew up she started writing poetry online
through social media websites like Instagram and Tumblr. Among her more notable works is her photoessay on menstruation, described as a piece of visual poetry intended to challenge societal menstrual taboos.
Although, she has published a book of poetry and prose entitled “milk and honey” in 2015, she is popular
as an Instapoet for the attention she gains online on her poems on Instagram. In all her compositions, her
usual themes are violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. Her popularity as an English writer at this young
age makes her a role model. Whereas she is inspired by foreign writers like Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, and
Warsan Shire, she is also inspired by Sikh scriptures and writes and lives in conformity with Sikh thought
and way of living. When a conterversy was raised about her photograph with a menstrual blood strain
on her pants (this photograph was one of the series on this subject), she explained her purpose to attract
the attention of the people who could object to such photograph, but did not speak when the woman are
pornified and treated in an inhuman way. This message when understood had its impact. Such like issues
show her understanding of Gurbani which does not treat a woman as impure or inferior in any way because
of this natural physical requirement. Such like bold wirters can show the way and rid the society of wrong
notions. She is really a role model who inspires with her works and we can all look forward to other great
works from her in future.
