the sun and her followers: Rupi's 'relatability'

When insta-poet extraordinaire Rupi Kaur was five, her mother handed her a paintbrush and told her to “draw her heart out.” Twenty-odd years later, the young writer brings the same vulnerability to her prose, adorning her social media platforms with cathartic scribbles. Heartbreak, self-empowerment, and racial disenfranchisement are compressed into shareable snippets; plant, water, and honey metaphors rule the day. Unlike Pound, Imagist pioneer and poetic dissident, Kaur did not set out to defy literary conventions. She never anticipated parlaying her millions-strong internet following into best-selling chapbooks and sold-out reading tours. But as the most prominent ‘who’ of ‘insta-poetry,’ Kaur’s meteoric rise begs questioning: What does the poetess’s viral fame say about the genre that is easy both love and hate, yet impossible to avoid?

progressive poetry - Kaur ingrains her verse with 21st-century sensibility

Kaur’s output exemplifies what I call the ‘instapoetic dichotomy:’ it is intensely personal to its author, but easily accessible to the reader. Much of Kaur’s writing explores her experience as a first-generation Sikh immigrant, coming of age in Toronto while negotiating ties to her family and culture. Her distinct lack of capitalization and punctuation – save for the odd period – is a nod to her native Gurmukhi script. This choice is crucial to Kaur’s ‘aesthetic,’ and it also reflects her equality-driven worldview. A vocal feminist, some of Kaur’s most notable poems chronicle sexism, abuse, reproductive injustices, and frustration with beauty standards. Her raw lyricism has resonated with millennial women, a social-media savvy demographic who largely comprise Kaur’s fanbase. Tired of trite traditional poetry and ‘fakeness’, Kaur’s followers have liked, shared, and re-blogged their idol from tumblr fame to the cultural zeitgeist.

Kaur strives to connect with her readers, not impress them, animating serious issues that have been overlooked by the historically white and male poetic establishment. Unhindered by high-minded obfuscations, Kaur’s audiences see themselves in her work. Kaur may be called a poet, but she is so much more - activist, illustrator, influencer, and bona fide brand. Whether audiences are lauding her best-sellers or labelling her a sell-out, Kaur’s influence cannot be denied. She has spawned literary controversy, stoked feminist infighting, inspired wanna-bes, and garnered a wide array of satire, topics which will be explored in future posts. One thing is for sure: in the marketplace of click-ability, relatability is currency.

All signs, then, point to ‘relatability’ – a holy, unifying grail of the digital age – as the catalyst for Kaur’s meteoric rise. The rhetoric studies graduate confesses that she never fully understood or identified with the poetry she was given in school. Kaur faced criticism from professors and rejection from journals, but she still has little desire to appease the poetic vanguard. She instead focuses on her audience: “I don’t want someone to read my poetry and think: what does that mean? So every time I’m writing, I’m thinking: OK, what word can I take out? How do I make this more direct? What’s too technical?”

Kaur's two best-selling books, published in 2017 and 2014

Kaur strives to connect with her readers, not impress them, animating serious issues that have been overlooked by the historically white and male poetic establishment. Unhindered by high-minded obfuscations, Kaur’s audiences see themselves in her work. Kaur may be called a poet, but she is so much more - activist, illustrator, influencer, and bona fide brand. Whether audiences are lauding her best-sellers or labeling her a sell-out, Kaur’s influence cannot be denied. She has spawned literary controversy, stoked feminist infighting, inspired wanna-bes, and garnered a wide array of satire, topics which will be explored in future posts. One thing is for sure: in the marketplace of click-ability, relatability is currency.