Rupi Kaur, a top ten Sunday Times-best selling poet, started by sharing her poems on social media.Despite cultivating 3.6 million followers on Instagram and releasing two bestselling collections of poetry; ‘milk and honey’ and ‘the sun and her flowers’, responses to Kaur’s work are very conflicted; some praise her ‘uncomplicated and concise’ style whilst others slate her ‘artless’ poems.
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She touches on many themes in her poems including relationships, heartbreak and racismbut one prevailing theme of many of the Canadian poet’s works is feminism. Take ‘what’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn? for example;
In ‘Feminist, Female, Feminine’a feminist is said to be “committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism”.In this poem, Kaur undeniably defies the patriarchy by empowering women and ‘exposing the way in which male dominance over females constitutes ‘perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture’”. She accuses ‘the world” for stripping females of their self-worth and thrusting on them the belief that she needs anything more than herself.
In the poem she empowers women by saying that they have “everything” they need. This empowerment is further highlighted/executed/ by Kaur’s use of enjambment; by ending the line with the word ‘everything’and continuing the sentence on another line creates a pause whichplaces emphasis on the word and gives it more weight. By applying this additional stress, it causes the reader to think about just how much “everything” is and therefore how strong and independent women are.
Another feminist attitude Kaur explores is the idea of women standing up for their rights together. She unites women in this poem with the use of nouns and pronouns. Rather than asking “what’s the greatest lesson [women] should learn?” she asks “what’s the greatest lesson a woman should learn?”. She also says “she” and “her” as if this poem is only relevant to one woman when it is, in fact, relevant to all women. By referring to all women as “she”, “her” and “a woman” it makes them one. With this unity comes strength and power.
The poem is also presented with an illustration, also done in a very simplistic style. It works well with the poem and visually represents women’s empowerment well as the drawing of the nude woman almost merges with the river and trees. This again represents unity but rather than unifying all women it unifies women with nature, suggesting strength. It paired with the nudity, which represents purity and being stripped back to basics, also shows that she doesn’t need anything that has been put there by man; that her and the natural world will suffice. The nudity also portrays vulnerability, showcasing how much women are oppressed by the patriarchy and stripped of their self- worth.
Whether you like her poems or not, there’s no denying that Kaur is shining a light on the inequality of sexes and therefore playing an important role in creating a fairer society.
hannah kent 