My Favorite Poet,
My Inspiration
-Fairuz Maliha Surma
People always talk about history. If something is very nostalgic, we appreciate that. We give priority to time. But very few appreciate the new belongings. We are afraid to praise something new, gets back giving credit to something very uncommon, while we forget that “every king was once a crying baby and every great building was once a map.”
Generations have changed from time to time and people’s thinking gradually changed too. There are many poets in the history who are still remembered and highly appreciated today for their great works. However, if I have to say something about my favorite poet, it is going to be someone from our generation, from our time, who not only inspires me about her life but also gives me the idea that success can be reached at a very younger age also. It’s not that I don’t enjoy comparing and contrasting between Shakespearian sonnets with Petrarchan sonnets, but then again if it comes to talking about my favorite poet, it’s no other than Rupi Kaur.
Rupi Kaur is a newcomer in the poetry industry and she is only 25 years old. Born on 4th October 1992, she is an Indian-Canadian poet, writer, illustrator, and performer. Kaur was born in a Punjab family in India and later on, she migrated to Canada with her family when she was only 5 years old. Now she lives in Toronto, Ontario. She is now mesmerizing the whole poetry industry in the field of literature. She is a true inspiration for our generation.
She started drawing at the age of five when her mother handed her a paintbrush and said, “Draw your heart out.” She was always an art lover and that can be seen in both of her books Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers. She has elaborated every single poem she has written with her own paintings and artworks.
In her early life, when she moved into Canada, she had a problem with her language as she couldn’t speak of that native language. From that very time, she started writing short poems and painted beautiful paintings for her friends and later on for her high school crushes. She started her career through the internet from social platforms like Tumblr and Instagram. She used to post short poems with illustrative paintings and hashtags and used to post them online. Soon, she started gaining followers from all over the world. Later on, in 2014, she published her first book Milk and Honey which was a massive success. This single book earned her so much fame that now it’s tough to find a teenager who has not read any of her two books. Book sales of Milk and Honey surpassed the 2.5 million copy mark. The book was also on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 77 weeks. Her second book, The Sun and Her Flowers was published in 2017 which is also another success of her career.
Poets write pages after pages just to make a simple line complicated at times, whereas Kaur prefers writing simple English language to grab the attention of all kind of readers. Kaur says, “My written work is meant to be an experience that is easy for the reader to follow; with simple drawings to elevate my words, I prefer simplicity over complexity”.
Her works mainly cover the area of abuse, femininity, love, self-care, heartbreak, loss, trauma, healing, migration and revolution. Some of her famous short poems and quotes are:
# “I am a museum full of art
but you had your eyes shut.’’
# “If you were born with the weakness to fall, you were born with the strength to rise.”
# “What is stronger than the human heart which shatters over and over and still lives.”
# A lot of times we are angry at other people
for not doing what we should have done for ourselves.
# “They leave and act like it never happened,
They come back and act like they never left.”
Kaur was listed as one of the BBC 100 Women in 2017 who talks openly about street harassment. She talks about feminist issues not only in her poems and books but also in her conferences and every speech she gives. She describes the change in the women as, “smooth as milk and as thick as honey” which was also the reason for naming her first book after it. Her poem has been and will be contagious to every reader who reads her work even for once.
Kaur might not be as realistic as Shakespeare, or as reasonable as Alexander Pope. She probably doesn’t have volumes of books with her name titled as the author. Her plays might not be performed on stage or her quotes might not be in the category of all the legendary poets over centuries. But when it’s a gloomy morning with clouds all over the sky, you would simply enjoy her book and her thoughts with a mug of coffee. When it’s raining outside and you feel like dancing with the butterflies next to your garden, her writings will make your dance even more gracefully. When it’s nighttime and you can’t sleep for the pain you feel in your aching heart – so vibrant that you can almost hear it – Kaur’s beautiful piece of work will simply wipe off your tears giving you the courage to wake up next morning with a brighter smile. That’s Rupi Kaur for you, the one and only.