Rupi Kaur

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Rupi Kaur (2017)

Rupi Kaur , Panjabi ਰੂਪੀ ਕੌਰ , (born October 4, 1992 in Punjab ) is an Indian-Canadian writer.

Life

Rupi Kaur's parents belong to the Sikh ethnic group in India. The family emigrated to Canada in 1996, where Kaur grew up in Toronto and learned the English language. Kaur attended Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton and then studied public speaking and professional writing at the University of Waterloo .

Her first book milk and honey is an anthology of her own poetry, prose and her own illustrations. It was published in 2014. The book sold 2.5 million times and was on the New York Times Best Seller list for over a year . She was also able to build on these successes with her second book, the sun and her flowers , in 2017.

Career

During her school days, Kaur published her works anonymously; It wasn't until 2013 that she started sharing works under her name on the Tumblr platform. A year later she switched to Instagram, where she illustrated her texts with simple drawings. Rupi Kaur and other female poets such as Amanda Lovelace, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Lang Leav, Nayyirah Waheed or Warsan Shire , who use this platform, are therefore also called Instapoets. In 2015 she attracted attention there with the publication of a photo of a fully clothed menstruating woman: lying on the bed with blood on her pants and on the sheet. Instagram deleted the picture - and thus turned the network against itself. Thousands of people shared the post and showed their own period pictures, Instagram finally apologized. Although the incident contributed significantly to her notoriety and her millions of followers, from whom her poetry has benefited to this day, Kaur regrets the action today because of all the hatred that hit her as a result.

Rupi Kaur's poems cover a broad thematic spectrum from friendship and lovesickness to migration, violence and trauma. As in the Gurmukhi script , for writing their mother tongue Punjabi is used Rupi Kaur's lyrics are entirely in lowercase letters written. Kaur particularly appreciates that all letters are treated equally because this also corresponds to her worldview. Her texts are short, easy to understand and accessible, the drawings serve to reinforce the message of her words. She developed her writing style based on her own experience and the often difficult access to English-language poetry for non-native speakers.

This simplicity and directness of her language as well as the context of the social media in which her work is distributed are also at the center of criticism of Kaur's work: more traditional poets of the literary establishment such as Rebecca Watts criticize this "culture of the noble amateurs" on the Internet lyric poetry - which should actually be a fine art - has degenerated into easily digestible, short-lived and shallow short messages. Other critics read in Rupi Kaur's work the collective experiences of South Asian women in the context of colonialism and patriarchy and deny Kaur, who herself grew up in privileged Western circumstances, the right to make this perspective - according to the critics - so universal in her work represent. Her supporters, on the other hand, value her authentic language, which enables her to reach a global audience directly via social media, and appreciate the diversity that Kaur and many of the other Instapoets bring to the otherwise mainly white-dominated market for poetry. The sales figures also speak for their continued popularity: Rupi Kaur has been translated into 40 languages ​​and milk and honey , with over three and a half million copies sold, replaced Homer's Odyssey as the best-selling volume of poetry some time ago.

Works

  • milk and honey . 2014
  • the sun and her flowers . 2017
    • The flowers of the sun: poetry . Translation of Anna Julia Strüh. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2018 ISBN 978-3-73365-123-7

Web links

Commons : Rupi Kaur  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shannon Carlin, Shannon Carlin: Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'. In: Rolling Stone. December 21, 2017. Retrieved March 23, 2019 (American English).
  2. ^ Carl Wilson: Why Rupi Kaur and Her Peers Are the Most Popular Poets in the World . In: The New York Times . December 15, 2017, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 23, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Tariro Mzezewa: Rupi Kaur Is Kicking Down the Doors of publishing . In: The New York Times . October 5, 2017, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 23, 2019]).
  4. ↑ About Instapoets. May 14, 2018, accessed March 23, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Shannon Carlin, Shannon Carlin: Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'. In: Rolling Stone. December 21, 2017. Retrieved March 23, 2019 (American English).
  6. ↑ Kendra Stenzel: Taboo topic menstruation: The red cloth . In: Spiegel Online . December 11, 2015 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 23, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Shannon Carlin, Shannon Carlin: Meet Rupi Kaur, Queen of the 'Instapoets'. In: Rolling Stone. December 21, 2017. Retrieved March 23, 2019 (American English).
  8. ^ The Problem With Rupi Kaur's Poetry. Retrieved March 23, 2019 .
  9. ↑ bio | rupi kaur. April 15, 2017. Retrieved March 23, 2019 .
  10. ^ Carl Wilson: Why Rupi Kaur and Her Peers Are the Most Popular Poets in the World . In: The New York Times . December 15, 2017, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed March 23, 2019]).
  11. ↑ PN Review Print and Online Poetry Magazine - The Cult of the Noble Amateur - Rebecca Watts - PN Review 239. Retrieved March 23, 2019 .
  12. ^ The Problem With Rupi Kaur's Poetry. Retrieved March 23, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Faith Hill, Karen Yuan: How Instagram Saved Poetry. October 15, 2018. Retrieved March 24, 2019 (American English).
personal data
SURNAME Kaur, rupee
ALTERNATIVE NAMES ਰੂਪੀ ਕੌਰ
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian-Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th October 1992
PLACE OF BIRTH Punjab (India)