Rupi Kaur: 'I’ve never been more aware of my colour'

Rupi Kaur became a bestselling poet with her raw verses on love, feminism and abuse. Now she’s turning her attention to Donald Trump’s America, she tells Samuel Fishwick

It's strange to hear the poet Rupi Kaur sounding so uneasy about Instagram and Twitter, because her success has been driven by it. “I never open my direct messages,” says the 24-year-old Canadian, whose vulnerable, short but shareable verses about love,

trauma, feminism and abuse have captured an audience of 1.2 million Instagram and 124,000 on Twitter since she began posting them. “I can read 2,000 comments about how great I am, but if I read one comment saying I’m ugly I’ll cry for a week.”

The internet-fired sensation, whose first collection Milk & Honey sold more than a million copies worldwide and reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list, knows the medium better than many.

Rupi Kaur

Her rise began in 2015 when she fought Instagram’s removal of a photo she posted showing menstrual blood — part of a university project on taboo. “There’s such a negative dialogue there about periods, and I was so tired of cursing and hating myself for it,” she says. “I knew people would be uncomfortable, but I didn’t think there’d be such a wild reaction to it.”

After Kaur wrote about the censorship on Facebook there was an online backlash — including death threats — and Instagram eventually lifted the ban.

If her last book was about “holding a mirror up to myself” her second will be about “holding a mirror up to the world in general”. The world needs healing, she says. “Looking at my skin colour you would assume, visually, that if I were to vote I would vote Hillary Clinton. When the election results came out I was at Dubai airport and we were watching the results come in, and looking at the people there I couldn’t read them. They didn’t seem disappointed. It was just like: ‘What is happening?’”

The day Trump was inaugurated she was in San Diego and, on a friend’s advice, didn’t leave the apartment. “I’ve never been more aware of my colour,” she says. She has friends in California and in New York and many are undocumented. “I wanted to help, but it’s just such a helpless situation. The fear is the worst part. People are now just cooped up living in their houses because they think if they go outside they’ll be shipped back.”

Read More: http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/arts/rupi-kaur-i-ve-never-been-more-aware-of-my-colour-a3531171.html

Evening Standarad

Rise of Sikh Women